Attempts by the New South Wales government to legitimise flood plain water harvesting by big irrigators through a licensing scheme have again been stymied amid fears it will lock in unsustainable water practices in the Murray-Darling basin.
Labor and a majority of the crossbench joined forces in the NSW upper house on Thursday to disallow the framework legislation for the scheme.
This was the second time the NSW government had been defeated on regulations covering flood plain harvesting.
Moves are now afoot to establish an upper house inquiry into flood plain harvesting amid concerns that without more data on how much water is currently being harvested, unsustainable practices will be entrenched in the Murray-Darling basin for decades.
The independent Justin Field, who has led the scrutiny of the flood plain harvesting legislation, said there was a shared objective to ensure the rules around flood plain harvesting were fair and transparent and could deliver for downstream communities and the environment.
“That is not currently the case,” he said.
Labor’s Penny Sharpe said that “a lack of trust is at the heart of this dispute. There has not been the very basic work to get consensus on this very difficult issue.”
Irrigators, mainly in western NSW, are currently free to capture water moving across their properties, using levee banks and channels. It is then captured in huge private dams. These have proliferated across NSW in the past decade.
The practice has been blamed, along with climate change, for the sharp falloff in inflows into the Murray-Darling system. It’s seen to undermine the Murray-Darling basin plan.
In September, the Wentworth Group of Concerned Scientists released a study that found 2tn litres of water — enough to fill Sydney Harbour four-and-a-half times – had simply disappeared from the river system since 2012.
The Wentworth group measured actual flows against what was expected each year under the basin plan at a number of sites. The flows were down 20% on average.
While some sites received the expected flows, most sites including those upstream of Ramsar wetlands of international importance did not.
One explanation is that the water is simply not reaching the river system and is being harvested by irrigators.
The NSW government has recognised that flood plain harvesting needs to be regulated but a lack of data means no one is sure how much water is currently being taken and whether the amount proposed to be licensed will be sustainable in the future.
“These regulations would have legitimised and made permanent a form of water take that has never been licensed or measured, never been accounted for under the cap [in the Murray-Darling basin plan] and that has been depriving communities, farmers and Aboriginal nations along the Darling-Baaka and the Menindee Lakes,” the Greens MP Cate Faehrmann said.
“They would have provided compensable licences with water entitlements worth millions of dollars, tying the hands of any future government that would seek to rein in flood plain harvesting. It would be like unscrambling an egg.”
The Greens plan to launch an inquiry next week with the support of Labor and the crossbench. “The committee will be making recommendations on how flood plain harvesting should be licensed and regulated,” Fahermann said.
Field said the government should ensure that any licensing scheme guaranteed downstream flow targets. This would mean that licences could be cancelled or curtailed if flows in the river system fell below the target.
“Without these targets, the environment and downstream communities end up carrying the risk if the government gets the modelling or rules wrong and as we continue to see falling inflows into our catchments as a result of climate change,” he said.
The NSW Irrigators’ Council, which supports the government’s proposed reforms, said a failure to implement licensing and metering of flood plain harvesting meant that uncontrolled take of water would continue.
“All stakeholders have expressed support for limiting, licensing and metering, so it is simply unreasonable for the upper house to play politics and stoke division against community expectations,” the council’s chief executive, Claire Miller, said.
Comment was sought from the water minister, Melinda Pavey.