A new Commonwealth report into the Murray Darling Basin reveals why Red Gums are wilting and Regent Parrots are threatened, with only a little over half the purported benefits of an irrigator offset actually eventuating.
In 2017, Commonwealth and state ministers cut the amount of water to be purchased from irrigators and returned to rivers by 605 gigalitres a year. In return, state governments promised to build 39 pumps, pipes and other projects and change a series of rules that were supposed to keep wetlands healthy with less water.
Today’s report from the Murray Darling Basin Authority finds that promise has failed. The projects will do the work of just 340 GL a year, leaving a 265 GL shortfall. Only 13 of the 39 are complete. Fourteen were withdrawn in June, and the Authority has struck out three more, including both projects at Nyah-Vinifera Park near Swan Hill, because it doesn’t believe they will be working by the 31 December deadline.
Meanwhile, the full 605 GL has stayed available to irrigators each year since 2017.
A total of $1.4 billion has been budgeted for these projects, with $733 million spent.
Murray Darling Conservation Alliance spokesman Chris Gambian said there was an urgent need to make up the shortfall and keep the promise made to all Australians to bring the Murray Darling back to good health.
“This has been an expensive, harebrained scheme that has failed nature and communities alike.
“The Murray Darling Basin Plan was a promise to all Australians – now and in the future – to manage our precious water resources responsibly, in the national interest. Murray Watt and his State and Territory counterparts need to make it right and deliver that plan in full.
“No amount of concrete and pipes is a substitute for the water that is essential to life.”
Case Study – Nyah-Vinifera Park
Nyah-Vinifera Park is a conservation area located on the western bank of the River Murray 30 km north of Swan Hill in Victoria. The Nyah-Vinifera Park is one of the iconic Murray floodplain forests: 1000 hectares of intact and biodiverse red gum forests and wetlands and a unique cultural landscape. The park is home to red gums that are over 300 years old and threatened species, including the Regent Parrot.
For many years this beautiful place hasn’t received enough water and its health is declining. Flows in the river are usually too low to spill over the banks, depriving the floodplain of water and leaving it isolated from the river channel.
The fix is to send more water down the river and upgrade the bridges and road crossings that stop bigger flows spilling onto the floodplain. Instead, the Victorian Government planned a massive construction project to deliver doses of water to the wetlands with pumps and pipes, and hand the water it “saved” to irrigators.
Construction would destroy 14 hectares of breeding and foraging habitat for the Regent Parrot, a listed threatened species, and affect 145 large trees, including 13 identified as potential breeding trees. The Authority has now excluded both projects from its offset calculations, but the Vinifera works remain approved.