NSW government fiddles as rivers die
By Frances Kelly
NSW's inland rivers are in crisis. Ask anyone in country NSW to describe their local river, and at best they will say in it was in a better state years ago. At worst they will describe it as a dried-up ditch.
The responses vary according to the region. In the Lachlan River, salinity is a major problem; an average 900 tonnes of salt pass Jemelong Weir at Forbes every day. In the north, the Namoi River has regular blue-green algae outbreaks — a result of high phosphorous and nitrate loads and low flows.
Whatever the problem, people are aware that something needs to be done. In a recent EPA poll, river health was cited as the biggest environmental concern for most rural people.
Unfortunately, that concern was not enough to move the NSW government to immediate action when it announced its water package last month. It opted instead to appease the major irrigation lobby, which had declared war against any reform. The environment was put aside for another year.
Although natural flows and conditions in the Murray-Darling Basin rivers would normally vary from valley to valley, year to year and season to season, their declining health is very much human-caused rather than natural.
The main problem is known — too much water taken for irrigated farming such as cotton, and too little left for the environment.
Three quarters of the average annual flow or 10 million megalitres is diverted from the Murray-Darling Basin each year, and 95% of that is for irrigation. In NSW irrigators extract more than 6 trillion litres — equivalent to 12 Sydney Harbours — from the rivers annually, reducing flows by up to 80%.
This massive volume does not include that extracted illegally or the water taken from ground water and unregulated waterways.
The problems caused by over-extraction and the ensuing low flows are many and varied. As well as increased salinity, pollution and toxic blue-green algae outbreaks, there has been a dramatic decline in the health and numbers of native fish.
A NSW Fisheries search of the Murray River from 1995 to 1997 failed to find a single Murray cod, and more than one in four cod caught in the Darling River had abnormalities such as sores and growths.
Many other species, such as golden and silver perch and catfish, have more or less disappeared.
Two years ago research undertaken by the Department of Land and Water Conservation found that only two of the 19 dams it controls around NSW contained high quality water. The rest frequently suffered from outbreaks of toxic algae.
Another, more recent, investigation into bacterial quality in NSW rivers found many were too polluted to swim in and none were likely to pass health standards for drinking.
With the facts requiring fast action behind them, environment groups had been urging the government to consider allocating at least 20% of water back to the rivers, and to allow increased public participation in water decisions. Meanwhile, the irrigation lobby was predicting the end of rural NSW if these modest demands were met.
The environment groups' demands, backed by years of publicly funded scientific research pointing to a river system in crisis and the concerns of the wider rural community, failed to move the government. It opted to postpone action for a year while the various stakeholders — environmentalists, farmers, irrigators, government representatives and local groups — formed valley committees to discuss the matter further.
While a year of talk between opposing viewpoints might mean action of a kind, it brings the process closer to the 1999 election. Next year another round of the irrigation lobby's hysterical warnings of rural towns dying if cuts in water resources are forthcoming may set the government on the "postpone and talk some more" path again in the misguided belief that it would gain or save a rural seat or two.
However, the irrigation lobby's predictions of a dying rural sector are really the predictions that follow from what is happening to the inland rivers. If no action is taken, the environment, rural and wider community and the irrigators will all be affected by the sick rivers.
Most people are aware of this, and aware that the major irrigation lobby does not represent the community. A community that is aware, concerned and wanting action to revive the waterways is a force the government would be unwise to ignore next time around.
[Frances Kelly is natural areas campaigner with the Total Environment Centre.]