The Victorian and Federal governments are under pressure to declare exactly how water savings from a $1 billion irrigation upgrade will be shared between parched rivers and desperate farmers.
The Australian Financial Review reports that under agreements signed last year the savings from the second stage of the so-called Food Bowl Modernisation project, are to be split evenly between farmers and environmental programs.
But those arrangements were put under a cloud when a bulk entitlement order allowing the distribution of water savings was recently voted down in the state's upper house.
Well-placed sources have told AFR this could mean the commonwealth wants the environment's entitlement, of about 100 gigalitres, to be satisfied first before farmers began receiving any water.
