Barrier Daily Truth

‘All Murray, no Darling’

Friday, 17th February, 2012

By Gayle Hogan 

 The Darling River Action Group (DRAG) has vowed to take legal action if the Murray-Darling Basin Authority’s Draft Plan gets the go-ahead in its current form. 

DRAG Secretary Brian (Barney) Stevens said the group would follow the lead of the South Australian Government and fight what was a “poorly designed plan.”

“If the Darling River doesn’t get a better deal out of this, DRAG would take legal action on its own,” he said.

Mr Stevens said he would also write to the MDBA on behalf of DRAG and suggest the “D” be removed from MDBA because the plan did “nothing” for the Darling.

The Murray-Darling Basin Authority’s (MDBA) plan was released in November last year. It is half way through a 20-week consultation process and the MDBA is planning to table the legislation in Federal Parliament later this year. 

Mr Stevens urged people to use the consultation period as an opportunity to fight for a better deal for the Darling.

“If the plan is actually approved as it stands it leaves the Darling River in a very poor state, possibly in a worse state than before,” Mr Stevens told the BDT.

“The Darling River has been virtually ignored in the draft basin plan.”

Mr Stevens said returning 2,750 gigalitres of water to the Basin from the Murrumbidgee, Murray and Golburn rivers was not the answer.

“They’re going to carry most of the weight. They’re ignoring the upper basin completely.”

“They should take the water from the cotton growers rather than the food growers.”

Mr Stevens said it was no surprise that cotton growers were once again being looked after.

“Cotton seems to have become a permanent crop rather than an opportunistic crop.

“There isn’t much of a problem for irrigators anywhere in the basin. Irrigators are not threatened by the plan.

“If you don’t want to sell your water licences, you don’t have to.”

Mr Stevens said one of the worst aspects of the plan was that whole river valleys or even whole states would be allowed exceed their extraction limits by up to 20 per cent before they were considered to be in breach of the limit.

“If the whole basin went 20 per cent over allocation, they’d be using more water than they did before.”

Mr Stevens’ comments come as NSW Water Commissioner, David Harriss, said any suspicion downstream that NSW allocations will increase courtesy of the MDBA were misleading and wrong.

“The NSW Government is not introducing any rules that allow licensed water users in unregulated streams within the NSW Murray-Darling Basin to increase extraction by 10 per cent. Any suggestion otherwise is nonsense,” said Mr Harriss.

Mr Stevens encouraged locals to attend Regional Development Australia Far West’s 

public consultations to make their voices heard.

The RDA will collate comments for submission to the MDBA. The proposed public consultation date for Broken Hill is March 5; March 6 in Menindee; and March 8 in Wilcannia. Venues are yet to be advised. To register phone 8087 8383. 

“I’d recommend people attend these RDA consultations,” Mr Stevens said.

“It would be a lot better if the MDBA would send someone here.”