Murray-Darling tourism at risk

Mr Hatty said in its current form, the Basin Plan proposed to remove “massive” volumes of water from primary production which would cause serious third party impacts for farmers and rural communities due to lost revenue.

But the potential impact on rural tourism and other businesses are also real and can’t be ignored, he said.

His home town of Tocumwal and Barooga in southern NSW are genuinely at risk of suffering economic damage, along with other tourism-reliant communities nearby on the Murray River like Cobram and Barmah in northern Victoria.

Mr Hatty said thousands of tourists packed his area of the Murray River region during the summer months and school holiday times, especially during the Easter break, swelling the town’s population and boosting the economic “harvest” for battling local businesses.

But if the local river system swells by about 20,000 mega-litres per day or more, it can cause water levels to rise significantly and prevent access to beaches and family recreational areas, like those designated for camping.

He said a natural flooding event two years ago caused the river to rise sharply and block tourist access virtually over-night, resulting in holiday makers cancelling their plans.

Subsequently the community suffered a steep business down-turn, with critical income washed-away and never recovered.

Mr Hatty said he was worried the Basin Plan may be proposing to introduce un-natural flooding or added water flow events into the system to achieve environmental objectives that would effectively create similar third party impacts, if poorly timed.

That’s despite the Murray Darling Basin Authority saying such negatives would be avoided, he said.

His biggest concern is about the lack detail for an environmental watering plan, within the draft Plan, that clearly outlines when and where water would be released for down-stream river-flows, to meet environmental objectives at various targeted, icon sites.

Mr Hatty said he made the same kind of warnings in his submission to the Authority’s public consultation processes, including in his speech at a public meeting in Deniliquin last year, asking for more detailed consideration, to avoid third party impacts.

But in reviewing the latest version of the draft Basin Plan, he has not yet seen any clear evidence indicating the Authority has thought through those issues adequately and addressed his concerns with mistimed, over-watering.

“A lot of sceptics out there would suggest the Authority has no idea how they are going to manage such massive volumes of water to appease these so called environmental objectives, without causing third party impacts,” he said.

Mr Hatty said he was also concerned the river system’s water flow constraints may also cause over-watering, ironically to meet environmental aims, that would result in detrimental, unintended environmental damage.

He said he was concerned that forests along-side the river system may be over-watered, causing trees to die a slow death from drowning, as has happened from natural flooding events over the past two years.

Mr Hatty is a third generation farmer who operates a 960 hectare farm, "Wondilibi" at Tocumwal.

He produces rice, which is his main source of income, to go with wheat and canola crops.

Over the past couple of years he’s implemented new measures to improve water use efficiencies on-farm, going away from flood irrigation systems and adopting two pivoting lateral irrigators - each 385 metres and 365 metres in length.

He has also re-lasered paddocks and improved irrigation channels in other suitable paddocks, to significantly improve on-farm water delivery methods.

Mr Hatty said his participation in the on-farm water efficiency program was made possible with the Federal government’s Basin infrastructure funding scheme that partnered with his own investments, and could save about 300 to 400 mega-litres per year, for the Basin.

The new on-farm infrastructure also delivers labour cost efficiencies, not just better-targeting water application to improve crop yields and growth.

He is hoping to improve his yield returns by between one quarter and one third, per year, on his long-term average, depending on water availability.

One of the trade-offs for participation in the program is agreement with the government to set aside part of his land or create and off-set area, dedicated to trees.

If that area’s carefully managed, it can be used for running live-stock but will mostly be locked away for conservation purposes.

He said that highlights the point that farmers are trying to get the balance right on their properties in being environmentally savvy and should be recognised as such, including for water management.

Mr Hatty said the belief that farmers were trying to use “every square inch” of their farms purely to create income and profit, and wasting water or causing environmental damage recklessly, was untrue and a myth that needed to be dispelled.

He said if federal Water Minister Tony Burke accepted the Basin Plan in its current form, it would introduce a political, man-made drought that would be more difficult to counter than the decade long drought that saw him cut rice production from his on-farm program, for five years.

Rice represented 80 per cent of his income before the drought but production was chopped out due to lack of water.

Mr Hatty said he’s able to grow rice again due to his recent on-farm improvements and better climatic conditions.

But he still struggles to understand why the Basin Plan requires the Authority to hold such a “massive” quantity of water, with the current 2750 gigalitre target for Sustainable Diversion Limits (SDLs) being too high.

Environmental water use also needs to be extremely efficient, he said.

“We need to make sure that when water is available we can get the environmental benefits we need, which are happening naturally anyway and water is not being wasted by over-watering,” he said.

Mr Hatty said he was also concerned the Basin Planning process had developed this far, and was almost due for a vote in federal parliament, on the back of questionable science; especially with the Basin’s ecology altered by recent flooding events.

“Over time the pendulum will swing back the other way where they will start to say they can actually manage the system with far less water but they are not investigating that at the moment,” he said.

“They are investigating a system of, ‘let’s see how much water we can get and how far we can splash it around’.

“The 2750GL’s is a massive quantity of water.

“I believe they have about 1400GL’s of held entitlement and another 650GL’s of non-held entitlement from efficiency and infrastructure work and maybe another 500GL’s from the Living Murray project but no idea what they’re doing it.

“We’re expected as a business to have an idea what we’re going to do with our water and be efficient with water use on-farm.

“Surely that same rigour should be going towards the water they want to use for the environment.

“The sensible thing would be to assess the water the government have at the moment and be realistic with the outcomes – what’s the point of watering a forest that gets watered naturally every couple of hundred of years anyhow.

“There’s so much uncertainty about what the government is going to do.”

Mr Hatty said he was frustrated by environmental groups and the Greens who are pushing hard for environmental outcomes in demanding 4000GL’s as the minimum SDL target.

He said those groups “don’t have a grasp on reality” and most of their members don’t even live or work in the Basin.

”They are basically city based and driving their agendas without any real on the ground knowledge,” he said.

“I’d be more than happy to host any of them any time to take a look at what we do and have a listen.

“I don’t want to try and preach to them; I just want to show them what goes on and what we actually do here to manage our environment and survive.”