MEDIA RELEASE

7th January 2010

In response to the announcement by the NSW Department of Water & Energy that it does not believe that recent flooding rains in the Darling Basin will result in increased flows into the lower Murray, environmental and public water rights advocacy group Fair Water Use (Australia) has called for the Commonwealth to keep its 2008 promise to provide “comprehensive, detailed and externally reviewed audit” of private water storages in the Basin: Read ABC article.

National coordinator of FWU, Ian Douglas stated today, “Given current management arrangements with respect to the Menindee Lakes, there is no incentive for the NSW government to reduce the capacity of private dams and to remove the massive, frequently illegal, surface water impoundments constructed upstream from the lakes by agribusinesses seeking to persist with broad-acre irrigation of high water demand crops in what is predominantly a semi-arid environment.”

“It is widely acknowledged that the failure to make such information publicly available is a result of objections raised by some Basin States. In the absence of this vital data, Australians can have no faith that the Basin Plan being prepared by the Murray-Darling Basin Authority is based on a thorough understanding of all factors contributing to its current lamentable condition”, Dr Douglas continued.

He concluded, “The ability of individual Basin States to act in a manner contrary to the overall benefit of the river system is the core reason why Australians are increasingly demanding that the Commonwealth assume total control of the river system via a new, entirely independent and appropriately empowered body, for the sake of the unique environment of the Basin, its long-term productivity and its communities”.