Much has been made of alleged water theft and lack of political willpower as reasons for the Murray-Darling Basin Plan’s demonstrable failure. And while sure, New South Wales is pulling out of a plan the government failed to monitor and enforce at any rate, experts are now pointing to a fundamental misunderstanding of ecological systems — namely return flow, and poorly thought-out irrigation infrastructure — as a sign that the $13 billion plan was doomed before it began.
Of the $6 billion already spent on the Murray-Darling Basin Plan, some $4 billion has been spent on water recovery infrastructure projects that, according to a recent report delivered by University of South Australia Economics Professor Lin Crase and 11 other water experts, offer “no scientific evidence that they have actually increased net stream flows”.
Rather, signatories of the Murray-Darling Declaration argue that “much more could have been achieved for far less, as federal government data shows that buying water from willing sellers is 60% cheaper than building questionable engineering works”.
Crase tells Crikey the focus on sophisticated irrigation infrastructure, however well-intentioned, has counterintuitively delivered less water for the environment by recycling “lost” water that would have instead been returned to the broader environment.
As an example, he offers a hypothetical farmer who traditionally pumps 100 megalitres (Ml) over their trees — only 20Ml of which is absorbed by plant life, 40Ml of which stays in the soil, and the final 40Ml of which leaks and “accidentally almost keeps the wetland alive next door”.
However, the farmer now decides to sell 20Ml to the government’s environmental effort and, crucially, uses the proceeds to install special drains that can recycle their 80Ml of water in its entirety.
“Now think about that whole transaction: the government bought 20Ml for the water to preserve wetlands, and the consequence has been that the government now has half as much water to put into the wetlands than it did previously. And basically, that’s what we’ve been doing throughout the whole basin.”
Basically, the more efficient the irrigation infrastructure, the less opportunity for water to return to the broader ecological system.
And while groups such as the Murray-Darling Basin Authority have highlighted rampant non-compliance over meterable (i.e. surface level water and groundwater) and even some non-meterable (i.e. floodplain harvesting) water sources, Crase says not enough has been done in Australia to account for, let alone measure, these return flows.
Indeed, two other academics and signatories to the declaration, Professor R. Quentin Grafton and John Williams, found that a 2017 Productivity Commission Draft Report on National Water Reform showed a “complete absence of any significant discussion about return flows from irrigation, although it was identified in the ATSE submission and noted in the Draft Report as a research need”.
“This is despite the fact that the Draft Report identified as one of the successes of past water reform as improved ‘water use efficiency’,” they wrote.
Crase is now arguing for three changes to the plan, explained further in the Declaration Recommendations:
“First thing is stop wasting money on irrigation infrastructure, because we don’t know whether it works and we’re pretty confident that the numbers that are there are wrong. Second of all let’s do an audit of what actually has been purchased for the environment, and work out where it is or whether it’s just imaginary water.
“And thirdly, make sure we have a body that is at arm’s length from the politics of it all that can actually check and keep an eye on these things, and make sure that governments are not just marking their own score cards.”
To that final point, he advocates for a body similar to the National Water Commission. While Crase states it was “a bit of a toothless tiger”, he contends it acted as an independent statutory body that “at least had the ability to call bad practice out [and] call out the states” before it was abolished by the Abbott government in 2014.
As to technological solutions to the lack of data on return flows, Crase suggests a greater incorporation of satellite technology — a common solution across international monitoring initiatives. Still, this belies his overarching point that subsidising irrigation infrastructure is an unproven and costly initiative at best and, at worst, actually detrimental to the environment.
“Many of us have spent the last 10 years explaining to various politicians, various government inquiries, goodness knows what, about the nonsense of this whole water use efficiency debate and the nonsense of subsidising irrigation in order to achieve the objectives of the Basin Plan.”
“But it’s got us nowhere and what we’ve managed to do is spend $6 billion with a very strong prospect of much, much less water for the environment than what people have been told.”
I lived on the banks of the mighty Murray River in a small township within spitting distance of the southern ocean. And year by year, month by month, week by week, day by day and hour by hour . . . we watched . . and we cried . . . so that even tears might forestall the inevitable. The Murray River died. No flow, no pools, no moist mud . . . just dry, baked and broken . . . Money, greed and politicians triumphed. And still today, they are triumphant.
Why would anyone think that a joint state federal body/agreement would work.? Just about every such system is dysfunctional. National Electricity Market, National Disability Insurance, COAG, Health Services.
In all cases there are huge costs extracted from consumers (and government who pass the costs on via taxes). This money provides jobs to a bureaucracy which creates rules but rarely enforces them.
Rarely are the costs and benefits to consumers evaluated, even more rarely are alternative approaches examined.
Are there any working Commonwealth/State systems?
The biggest stuff up and one of the main reasons the plan is now falling to bits is the recognition that the Coorong flows came from the opposite direction historically and they were both surface and ground water flows which meant pre barrages the Coorong flowed into Lake Alexandrina even in the middle of summer . In 1940 the barrages are constructed directing the flows from the south of the Coorong directly to the Murray Mouth and that is the reason the mouth never closed over during the 1967 / 68 drought . The flows kept dropping into the Coorong from the south due to the extensive networks of drains in the south east when during the 1982 drought there was insufficient flows to keep the mouth open and it closes for the first time since 1940. The Murray Mouth closed over frequently prior to the construction of the barrages when the Coorong flows sustained Lake Alexandrina during the low flows from the Murray River in summer (1902 Royal Commission into the Murray Darling put the flows at less than 1.2 meters in South Australia for 5 to 6 months of the year , the minimum height for the River boats to operate ) . The flows continued to drop and during the Millenium drought of 2006 with only 26 gigalitres now entering the southern lagoon and this is the reason salinity levels were 6 to 10 times that of sea water and the Eastern Sates were wrongly blamed . Currently the South East Restoration Flows project will contribute an additional 20 gigalitres , enough to stop hyper salinization but not enough to flush the system with exponentially increasing organic material growing at over the 5 mm annually . The Coorong system is dying and nothing to do with the Murray Darling Basin system . The first signs of this deposition of organic material in the Coorong was in the 1950s . The freshening flows for Lake Albert also came from the south and flowed into Lake Alexandrina . The Murray Darling Basin plan is a triple bottom line disaster over seen by fools with most major political parties including the Greens fully aware of the disaster but possibly to stupid to understand the significance and if they are , now caught in the glare of the headlights coming their way . The Facebook page Murray Darling Basin Myths outlines all the false assumptions behind this fiasco
LOL. You’re such an obvious troll that its almost embarrassing to call you out on it. I’ve seen that Facebook Page, & it’s so obviously a propaganda site funded by the Cotton Industry, & other vested interests, that it’s laughable.
If Tones canned it we can be fairly certain the NWC (toothless tiger that it may have been) had some worth and merit.
It must be time we banned cotton crops in the worlds driest continent, it’s been said/sung that ya never miss the water till ya well runs dry and that day’s already arrived for some while there’s more to come.
There is a point where the Federal Government needs to step in and ban further large scale farming developments in the Murry/Darling basin. For too long it’s relied on the taxes coming in from cotton, pasture and rice, and the votes from irrigat0rs and the communities that support them. I grew up in a small town, I know that this will have a bad effect on lives and jobs, but there’s a point where you have to face reality instead of yelling that it’s someone else’s problem downstream.