The Commonwealth Environmental Water Holder, David Papps, has said his capacity to influence the release of water from storages was limited by the same rules which applied to irrigators.
Southern Riverina Irrigators chairman Graeme Pyle said the Hume Dam was spilling, yet farmers allocations were still low, which was a clear example of how the rules didn’t align with the goal of achieving “triple bottom line” outcomes.
“Water must be managed in a way to meet the needs of regional communities, economically, socially and environmentally - currently environmental needs are coming before human needs,” Mr Pyle said.
Farmers in the New South Wales Murray region would not receive an increase in allocations, until water owed to the Barmah-Millewa Forest environmental account was repaid, despite the fact the forest was currently flooded.
“This is causing a high level of frustration for farmers who were hoping for higher allocations with the amount of rain over the state and recent high river flows.”
But Mr Papps said river operating rules dictated what was and what was not possible.
“Environmental water held in storages is treated the same as the irrigation water stored in these same storages,” Mr Papps said.
“The rules dictating use, carryover and trade apply equally to all players.”
He said the CEWH’s capacity to influence the release of water from storages and contribute to an increase in the size of natural flooding events, for additional environmental gain, was appropriately limited.
“Just like irrigators, we can only do what we are allowed to, or entitled, to do according to the river operating rules in these circumstances,” he said.
New operating rules would be required if the CEWH and other environmental water managers were to take full advantage of spills and natural flooding events, to optimise environmental outcomes, whilst ensuring there were no additional impacts on farms.
Mr Papps said the environmental benefits resulting from these spills and natural flooding events had been taken into account as part of the Basin Plan.
“Water that has been recovered for the environment is intended to provide additional benefits to those that are achieved through spills and natural floods,” Mr Papps said.
“This includes extending periods of watering for important forests and wetlands, supporting waterbird breeding and providing follow-up flows to consolidate the benefits from natural flows.”
But he said there might be the opportunity to achieve even better outcomes for the environment, in future.
“Under the Basin Plan, southern States are putting in place arrangements by 2019 that will allow water to be delivered on top of natural flows (piggybacking).”
Mr Papps also rejected assertions, by Mr Pyle, there were calls for “all the water to flow down the Murray River to South Australia.”
He said the basin plan did not direct the CEWH to contribute to major flood flows within South Australia.
“The Murray Darling Basin Authority has publicly noted that increases in flow rates to 80,000 ML/day or more at the South Australian border are not feasible, nor required, as they cannot be achieved even following the relaxing of flow delivery constraints.”
