The NSW Border Rivers valley is the first cab off the rank for licensing floodplain harvesting, with the recent release of proposed rules for consultation.
It is an important big step towards licensing take from overland flow and rainfall runoff in northern NSW basin valleys by July 1, 2021, and bringing aggregate licensed take down within their Sustainable Diversion Limits.
Floodplain licensing will correct any growth since the 2000 baseline. In the Border Rivers, it means reducing take by 13 per cent, from an annual average 49.4 gigalitres down to about 43GL.
The reduction in other valleys will be revealed as consultation reports are released in coming months.
This is a difficult prospect for irrigators facing reduced access to water to grow food and fibre.
But they also realise it is essential for accountability and public confidence that our rivers are managed within sustainable diversion limits and with all water take licensed and accounted for. That's why they've advocated for certainty through licences.
After July next year, the same process will get underway for irrigators on designated floodplains in other NSW valleys to the west of Hay, in the Barmah-Edward-Wakool system and the Lachlan valley.
But, as evidenced by the Healthy Floodplains project, the process will take years. Without a clear transition pathway like the north, southern landholders are left potentially exposed on overland flow and rainfall runoff captured in their water supply works,
Licensing and metering will also start to fill the vacuum in which misinformation has thrived.
Clear data means compliance agencies can ensure no one is getting more than allowed. The NSW Government committed to licensing this form of take in 2000. The frustration is successive governments have taken 20 years to get around to it.
The value of floodplain harvesting is already embedded in land value.
Licensing merely shifts the water right from the land value to the same footing as other entitlements, making the claim made in an opinion piece in The Land a fortnight ago, that irrigators are being 'gifted' licences worth $4 billion especially fanciful ("Big bin of money for floodplain harvesting," October 8, p28) .
That grossly inflated value does not stand scrutiny. The licensed volume will be based on FPH take in the baseline year, not the capacity of storages holding water from multiple licensed sources.
As for being worth $2745 per megalitre, which the Commonwealth paid Eastern Australian Agriculture in Queensland in 2017, that was almost twice the independent valuation. It will not in any sense be the going market price.
Floodplain licences will be inherently less reliable than supplementary licences trading for $1000 to $1400 a megalitre in northern valleys, and the ability to trade will be restricted.
Climate change will further impact their value.
River inflows across NSW have almost halved since 2000 because of extended droughts.
For all irrigators, it means more, dry 'bust' years, and fewer 'boom' years like 2011-12, the last time all users had access to overland flows.
The trend means that despite reduced take when it does flood, Menindee will still fill less often than in the much wetter 40 years pre-2000, when it contributed an average 39pc to South Australia's 1850GL and left more water in Hume for NSW Murray irrigators.
A less reliable Menindee puts more pressure on the Murray shared resource, with the NSW Murray General Security pool bearing the brunt of lower allocations.
Playing the blame game and stoking divisions between farmers only lets politicians off the hook, when we need those politicians to step up and implement State-wide solutions.
- Claire Miller is the NSW Irrigators Council chief executive officer.
