The Sunraysia irrigator who has been highly critical of plans for Murray-Darling River environmental flows, Bill McClumpha, has said last week’s ministerial meeting was further evidence the basin plan was being wound back.
Water ministers at the Mildura meeting agreed to present a plan to the Council of Australian Governments (COAG) that provided “credible and balanced possible pathways to implement the Murray–Darling Basin Plan package agreed in 2012.”
This would include using the Sustainable Adjustment Limit mechanism to offset the recovery target of 2,750 gigalitres (GL) by 2019, addressing impediments to delivering environmental water and efficiency measures to recover an additional 450GL by 2024.
However, Mr McClumpha said he believed the socio-economic review of the southern basin would be used to wind back the basin plan.
“It will predictably find there is a substantial socio-economic impact, along the lines of the Goulburn Murray Irrigation District (GMID) and Victorian reports,” Mr McClumpha said.
“It’s pretty clear it’s going to be along the exactly same lines.”
He said he feared there would be a huge cutback, in water recovered through the sustainable diversion limits (SDLs).
“Effectively the plan has been truncated, as of now,” Mr McClumpha said.
He has previously argued the 450 gigalitres of environmental upwater, promised to South Australia, must remain on the table.
It was vital to achieving a workable plan, for the whole Basin.
He said the Northern Basin cuts, proposed changes to the SDL adjustment mechanism and the 450GL upwater meant the plan was facing a grim future.
The Blackmore review into the SDL’s, was being used as the instrument to stop any further environmental water recovery.
“The plan is absolutely friendless, it is being dismantled before our very eyes,” Mr McClumpha said.
