There’s been a call for the Murray-Darling Basin Authority (MDBA) to carry out an urgent socio-economic analysis of the impact of the Murray-Darling Basin plan on southern communities.
Australian Dairy Industry Council (ADIC) Water Taskforce chairman, Daryl Hoey said the analysis was needed to provide an understanding of any proposed changes to the northern Basin plan.
“The MDBA should not be reviewing water recovery targets in the northern end of the Basin without understanding the impacts in the south,” Mr Hoey said.
“The authority can’t ask government to change the northern Basin target without also reviewing what different water recovery levels mean for southern communities and the environment.”
The dairy industry continued to invest in a number of reports to track the Basin Plan’s socio-economic effects, and the implications of attempting to recover more water from the irrigation pool.
In March, Dairy Australia commissioned Aither consultants to model the effects on the temporary water price of the Murray-Darling Basin Plan buybacks for the environment, and changing water demand from different industries.
It concluded that removing any more water from the collective pool, i.e. north and south, would inevitably make water more expensive, with serious implications for the dairy industry.
A spokeswoman for the MDBA said the organisation was currently preparing for an interim evaluation of the Basin Plan.
“This will be an opportunity to review the socio-economic and environmental benefits of the Basin Plan in the south, and the effect of its introduction,” she said.
“There is also an opportunity to improve social and economic outcomes from the Basin Plan in the south through the Sustainable Diversion Limit Adjustment Mechanism.
“Under this process, basin states are developing projects that can help deliver equivalent environmental outcomes with less water.
This would leave more water for consumption.
The spokesman said a full regulation impact statement on the environmental, social and economic implications of the Basin Plan was done before the Plan was signed off.
“However, the depth of information available in the north was not as great as in the south, so the MDBA agreed to gather more detailed information on potential social and economic effects to help inform the review,” she said.
