RIVER YARNS: THE MURRAY-DARLING MYTHS: WEEK EIGHT
Talking about River Yarns
With assistance from the Walkley Foundation, McPherson Media Group has commissioned Jane Ryan, a consultant with long experience and deep knowledge of water and resource management in the Murray-Darling Basin, to unravel the complex issues surrounding the Murray-Darling Basin Plan.
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Jane’s brief is to do so without the bias and hyperbole that has accompanied most commentary on the plan since its inception 14 years ago.
At a time when the Federal Government seeks to amend the plan to give effect to election promises to South Australia, Jane’s analysis will canvas what the plan has achieved already in the long history of resource management in the basin.
She explores the shortcomings of a political compromise on ‘a number’ for water recovery, when what is really required is a nuanced approach to securing the original ambitions for the plan.
This is the eighth and final article in the series. Please also see the article headlined Where to next for the Murray-Darling at: https://www.countrynews.com.au/water/where-to-next-for-the-murray-darling/
SO, WHAT HAVE WE LEARNED?
Context
The Murray-Darling Basin has been managed as a collaboration of states who have been responsible for water management since Federation.
The Murray-Darling Commission was set up to share water by consensus decision-making to make the most of the catchment’s water.
Unpredictability seems to be the most consistent part of modern water management.
We are in wet times now and most recently we have seen some of the biggest flows down the Goulburn River than have been recorded before.
Generally, though, there is no doubt that there has been an average reduction of water flowing into our dams since the millennium drought.
Whether this step change effect we are seeing lasts for 50 or 100 years or goes back to pre-Colonial flow is unknown.
We can all agree that it would have large social, economic and environmental impacts if we ignored the pattern and used the resource in the same way we always had.
Plans are made to be implemented and reviewed. It seems disingenuous to not ensure compliance to the plan in the first place.
Part of the bewilderment of Victorian and southern-connected basin communities is that it seems that non-compliance is selectively addressed.
NSW valley water-sharing plans that were due almost five years ago are not yet completed.
About this time, environmental risks were raised by independent environmental water-holders concerned about water recovered for the environment used for consumption as it travels over state borders.
Timelines
There have been many actions that recognise the way the basin has been managed in the past is not sustainable for basin communities today.
Thirty years ago, a cap was put on any new licences to take water, meaning people now must trade them within the same bucket of water.
More than 20 years ago, the first plan for water recovery to improve the environmental health of the basin was developed, called the Living Murray.
This plan was for the recovery of 500 gigalitres of water and investment in infrastructure to deliver recovered environmental water in recognition of the modified river system.
And more than 10 years ago, a basin plan proposed water recovery targets from each valley to further rehabilitate the water-dependent landscapes.
Here in Victoria, we saw it as only part of our responsibility and we continue our approach with investment in catchment management and with First Nations to improve landscape condition.
The basin plan adopted the clear valley targets for water recovery in the Northern Region Sustainable Water Strategy, our community-endorsed plan.
This strategy outlined projects for these water recovery targets for local and basin environmental assets, minimising the socioeconomic impact of open-tender water purchase.
Basin landscapes
The Murray-Darling Basin lives large in most Australian’s minds as a big, mostly natural river system that goes from its headwaters in the Great Dividing Range to the Coorong and Murray Mouth.
But in reality, the basin is a patchwork of interdependent landscapes at a regional and local scale.
The underpinning geographic features that people have interacted with make up our many socioeconomic elements of the different communities across the basin.
First Nations communities were able to live in the landscape for thousands of generations, with great understanding and respect for River Country.
The groups that lived, loved and played in the southern basin were able to do so with protocols, rules and philosophies guiding their use of the bounty within water landscapes.
As more people populated the basin, living in urban and agricultural landscapes, the Murray-Darling Basin has changed and is no longer the mostly natural river system.
Communities have used the basin’s waterways for travel, recreation and everyday activities such as drinking water, cleaning and sanitation.
Pretty much every river in Victoria has a storage facility on it, holding water back for human use.
Working rivers
More than 35 per cent of water that flows into the Murray River comes from the upper catchments in Victoria – the mountains around the Dartmouth and Hume dams.
These dams were planned and built to supply drinking water to communities along the river, as well as communities outside the basin, such as Adelaide, Whyalla and Port Augusta.
The southern-connected basin is what we call the systems that supply communities in South Australia, NSW and Victoria with consumptive water for towns and agriculture.
The systems of dams, weirs, barrages and locks have been built over hundreds of years.
More recently, the water market shares water between these communities, connecting their management, compliance, delivery and use.
Ecological landscapes
The water-dependent landscapes in these areas vary, including upper catchment fast-flowing waterways through mountains and hills through to valleys.
They include tributaries that are significant habitat and flow through to the Murray River.
They also include places in some of the drier places in the mid- and lower-Murray catchment, that allow overflow of large volumes of water that is slower moving, such as floodplain wetlands.
As well as the flow from the upper catchments, places like the Lower Lakes and Coorong or Hattah Lakes also get rainfall and flow from local catchments.
Contrary to public commentary, every part of the catchment contributes to the health of our waterways.
The Murray River is not rotting from the mouth.
Catchments need to be rehabilitated to be able to improve the condition of the waterway all the way down to the mouth of the river. Getting water to the mouth is not the panacea, silver bullet nor sensible, if it is running from the top through a wasteland. Dams were built and cannot be ignored.
Changing the agreement
The announcement in August last year that the government would pursue the 450 Gl of water and buybacks were back on the table, heralded a massive change to not only the agreed Murray-Darling Basin Plan, but indeed any approach to water management in the Murray-Darling Basin.
For the first time since Federation, agreement from the states was not needed to decide how water would be shared in the basin.
The 2012 basin plan was turned on its head.
Statements about why were largely marketing slogans about no water recovered and the need for water to be supplied to South Australia.
There was no recognition of the water recovered and already being used to deliver outcomes in environmental and culturally important water-dependent landscapes.
There was no acknowledgement of the processes for building delivery infrastructure and changes to river operational rules required statutory approvals.
Nor any legal or statutory help announced to deal with liabilities associated with property rights for floods or addressing real community consultation timelines.
This politically charged legislation allows the most impactful way of water recovery to be threatened, and the protections all basin states agreed to have been made voluntary.
The announcement switches the focus of the basin plan from implementing the agreed projects delivering water already recovered for the environment.
Now we are told to forget that and instead target extra water recovery, which we originally only agreed to if socioeconomic impacts could be minimised.
Just do it
The diversionary tactics of unilaterally changing tack on the basin plan as implementation is being finalised is seen as questionable by many.
We know that successfully implementing catchment plans can seem boring.
What works is consistently and regularly paying attention to implementation action, to be monitoring what was expected to make a difference and whether it still is.
And to be adaptively checking on cumulative changes from this work on the health of communities, catchments and within the climate.
If you and your institutions aren’t interested in this, if it all seems a little beyond you, then maybe you need to sit this one out and let us get on with rehabilitating catchments.
Because we continue to work on it.
About the author
Jane Ryan — a former school captain at Notre Dame College in Shepparton — was deputy chief of staff to former Victorian Water Minister Lisa Neville, and has worked in senior roles in water resources and catchment management, including Director of Rural Water Policy and Programs, Strategic Engagement Manager for River Health and Consultation Manager for the Northern Region Sustainable Water Strategy.
During the millennium drought, Jane was involved in the development of the key water policies that remain the cornerstone of water management in northern Victoria, including environmental water recovery targets, carryover arrangements and changes to allocation water policy for the Goulburn and Murray systems in response to climate change.