$10 billion Murray-Darling Basin Plan still won't save the river

The Murray-Darling Basin Authority (MDBA) has just released their Draft Plan to save the river and it falls well short of our expectations. The Wilderness Society is deeply concerned that the plan has become a political football and will not deliver on its promises.

As they say, the devil is in the detail, and when it comes to the plan to save our biggest river, it's no exception.

Some of the biggest issues with the draft plan are:

• The amount of water that can be taken for irrigation and other purposes without destroying the river hasn't been worked out properly;
• The draft plan now allows for an enormous amount of water to be taken from underground sources (groundwater) principally for mining;
• The plan ignores the future impacts of Climate Change and
• The science behind the plan hasn't undergone the necessary level of scientific review;
• Rather than being a vision for a new rural economy based on sustainable use of water, it reinforces business-as-usual.

With these glaring omissions, the plan is little more than window-dressing and will do very little to save the river and the communities that rely on it.

So how much water can you take?

The Water Act of 2007, the Federal Legislation which outlines the requirements for the Basin Plan, is pretty specific about how this is determined but it seems the Murray-Darling Basin Authority has their own interpretation. The Act says that the Environmentally Sustainable Level of Take or ESLT should be worked out using the best available scientific knowledge and then, and only then, should a Sustainable Diversion Limit (SDL) be designated which accounts for other factors, such as socio-economic impacts.

The MDBA has conflated the two and in doing so makes it impossible to determine if the proper scientific rigour was applied to calculating the amount of water that can be taken sustainably. Not only does this approach undermine confidence in the science but it also runs the risk of failing to comply with the legal requirements under the Water Act.

Enormous increase in Groundwater for mining

Since the release of the Guide last year, the MDBA has radically increased the amount of Groundwater that can be taken from aquifers and other underground sources. This has been at the behest of the NSW government who uses a far less conservative method for calculating the amount of water available, an approach that the Wilderness Society considers highly risky and not based on sound science.

The large volumes of the water that they're proposing can now be extracted is too salty and full of heavy metals to be used in farming, yet it is perfectly suited to the needs of the mining, particularly the rapidly expanding Coal Seam Gas industry. The Murray-Darling is already heavily stressed from unsustainable water extraction for irrigation, the last thing it needs is to deal with the extra pressure from unbridled mining and gas development.

Ignoring the threat of Climate Change

The draft Basin Plan fails to take into account the future impacts of climate change on the river. Instead it takes a head-in-the-sand approach and assumes that any reduction in the amount of water as a result of decreased run-off will be within the bounds of normal variation, ignoring the best available scientific evidence which suggests that this highly unlikely.

Far from being a plan to safeguard the future of our foodbowl, it instead adopts a “She'll be right mate” attitude, one which should be ringing alarm bells all the way back to Canberra.

Show us your science!

The MDBA has consistently claimed that the “new science” behind the plan and the radically reduced amount of water it aims to recover for the river is sound. This is despite the fact that the reviews it has commissioned into its “new science” suggest otherwise. The CSIRO review that was released alongside the plan even goes so far as to say:

"The modelled 2800 GL/yr reduction scenario considered by the panel does not meet several
of the specified hydrologic and ecological targets"

Numerous scientific groups such as the Wentworth Group and the Australian Academy of Science have called on the MDBA to open up its science to independent peer review, a demand they have consistently dismissed as being unnecessary.

Furthermore, the methodology that the MDBA has used in calculating the increase in groundwater extraction has not be subjected to peer review despite the scientific consensus being that we understand precious little about these systems and that a conservative and precautionary approach should be used when exploiting them.

Failing the river and communities

Far from being a vision for a new rural future, the Basin Plan is a recipe for business-as-usual. By restricting the amount of water it will recover to the bare minimum it virtually guarantees that our rivers will continue to be exploited beyond the point of no return. The MDBA's claim that it simply can't return the necessary amount of water that the environment needs is spurious and shows a dismaying lack of vision.

The problem isn't one of money, there's $10 billion of taxpayer's money on the table after all. Rather it's a lack of political will.

It's time our politicians heard our call to LET THE MURRAY-DARLING FLOW OR GIVE US BACK OUR DOUGH.

What you can do

Sign the petition to Minister Burke.

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