Murray River. Credit: suburbanbloke/flickr
By Rich Bowden
A deal struck between the Federal and NSW Governments has seen an embargo lifted on federal purchase of NSW irrigators’ water.
The agreement between Acting Prime Minister Julia Gillard and NSW Premier Nathan Rees will see an estimated 890 billion litres of NSW irrigators’ entitlements flow back into the parched Murray Darling river basin.
More details of the deal will be released today however the buyback will allow the Federal Government to return water to wetlands in the Basin, replenishing water supply downstream. The embargo had been imposed in July by NSW Water Minister Phil Costa who had argued that his state was doing all the “heavy lifting” in regard to the federal water buyback scheme from the states of the Murray Darling Basin.
The new agreement provides: ”certainty and balance for regional NSW communities and water users without compromising our strong commitment to the environment,” said Mr Rees to reporters.
Victoria’s ‘four percent cap’
However while the agreement is seen as a breakthrough, some environmentalists claim more pressure should have been placed on Victoria to remove its “four percent cap.” The law prohibits the amount of water that can be traded out of irrigation districts to 4 per cent of that region’s water, reports The Age.
The state law is unpopular with neighbouring states and environmentalists because it limits Victoria’s contribution to replenishing the Murray Darling river system, environmentalists say.
”The Commonwealth and NSW should have pressured Victoria to remove the 4 per cent cap, not installed another short-sighted barrier,” said Australian Conservation Foundation (ACF) spokeswoman Arlene Buchan said in a news release. ”It’s an eye for an eye and everyone ends up blind.”
NSW Premier Nathan Rees. Credit: timeshift9/flickr
Dr Buchan argued that both caps on trade and embargoes were to the detriment of both river health and irrigators’ financial well being.
“Caps on trade and embargos on selling water are an impediment to solving the overextraction problem, restoring our rivers and wetlands to health and putting the Basin’s irrigation industries on a sustainable footing.”
“Caps and embargoes are bad for the environment, as they slow down the rate at which life restoring flows can be returned to parched wetlands, and they are bad for irrigators who should be allowed to trade an important asset.
“The faster the gap is closed between the current extraction rates and new, lower extraction rates the easier the adjustment process will be,” said Dr Buchan.
Dr Buchan is the ACF’s Healthy Rivers Campaigner.
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