The
Murray-Darling Basin (MDB) Plan of 2012 aims to manage both consumptive water
use (for towns and irrigators) and environmental water to ensure the natural
ecosystems in the basin receive sufficient water for their long-term
health. A strong impetus for the plan development
was concern about the increasing level of water extraction and declining river
health across the Basin.
The success of the plan relies on the
cooperation of the four states – Queensland, NSW, Victoria and South Australia
- as well as the Federal Government.
Concerns
about the effectiveness of the plan have been aired for some time These came to a head in July last year with
the ABC TV Four Corners expose about water theft and meter tampering in the
Barwon-Darling part of the Basin. That
was cause enough for worry but what made it even worse was the lack of effort
in NSW to ensure compliance with the law as well as the stench of corruption from
the upper level of the NSW department responsible for monitoring and
compliance.
At the
beginning of this month a group of water scientists and economists aired their
concerns about the ineffectiveness of the plan in their Murray-Darling Basin
Declaration.
They
stated that with $6 billion already spent on water recovery projects across the
basin – including $4 billion to subsidise irrigation, there was for many of the
projects “no scientific evidence that they have actually increased net stream
flows.”
They
were also concerned that despite spending $500 million to upgrade water meters
“as much as 75 percent of all surface water diversions in the northern part of
the Basin may still not have water meters.”
The
group has also called for an independent audit of all water recovery measures
across the Basin as well as a new scientific body to advise governments on the
implementation of the 2007 Federal Water Act, the Act which led to the
development of the MDB Plan.
As these
criticisms have been rejected by the Federal Government, the MDB Authority and
the National Irrigators Council, any improvement to the Plan appears unlikely.
-
Leonie Blain
This article was originally published in the VOICES FOR THE EARTH column in The Daily Examiner on February 12, 2018.
