MEDIA RELEASE

Today’s announcement by the NSW Office of Water, that irrigators in the upper Darling have had “sufficient opportunities . . . to receive as much (water) as they want to” and that, despite initial projections, flows in the lower Darling will be insufficient to fill the Menindee Lakes, once again raises serious concerns about the management of the Murray-Darling Basin, according to national lobby group, Fair Water Use.

 The group’s national coordinator, Ian Douglas, responded to the statement saying, “Irrespective of the content of the Basin Plan, until such time as the Murray-Darling Basin Authority can put a figure on the combined capacity of private water storages throughout the basin, including illegal flood-plain diversions in the Darling catchment, there is little likelihood that basin-wide outcomes resulting from the implementation of the plan will be anywhere close to expectations”.
 
He continued, “In a meeting earlier this year with the Federal Minister for Climate Change, Energy Efficiency and Water, we enquired whether the Commonwealth would undertake to instruct the Authority to carry out a detailed audit of these storages. Unfortunately we received no such undertaking”.
 
“Fair Water Use calls upon the Minister to commit to releasing this essential information as part of the Basin Plan”, Dr Douglas concluded.