A student from RMIT (a Melbourne University) is doing a project on water and has asked me how environmental water is allocated.
There is no national or state-wide ledger (or website) showing how environmental water is acquired and allocated.
The following example is based on information that I have received from the NSW Murray Wetland Working Group Inc..
In the year 2000 this newly formed wetland working group was given a yearly allocation of 30,000 megalitres of water from ‘water saving’ made by Murray Irrigation Ltd..
The environmental water was to be used to save red gums, water wetlands and can also be traded.
This is how the group used their water over the first four years of their operation:
Year 2000
26,000 megs to water Barmah-Millewah Redgum forest
1,500 megs to Wanganella Swamp
2,500 megs traded
Year 2001
4,500 megs used to water Werai State Forest and
800 megs used to water wetlands on private properties
15,000 megs traded
Year 2002
3,945 megs used to water wetlands on private properties
23,000 megs traded
The 23,000 megs was traded at the height of the drought when water was selling for a premium. The 23,000 megs was sold for $3.8 million. Much of the money from this trade was apparently used to build a fish ladder.
Year 2003
7,510 megs used to water wetlands on private properties
1,600 megs used to water Gulpa Creek Reed Beds Swamp and Duck Lagoon
950 megs used to water Pollacks Swamp
550 megs used to water Thegoa Lagoon
11,910 megs traded
Totals for each year do not necessarily equal 32,000 megs as the allocation is nominal and dependent on the allocation within the Murray Valley.
When I asked the Murray Darling Basin Commission in June 2004 how much water wetland working groups have been nominally allocated overall and how this water is generally applied I was informed, “I am not able to advise you of the volume of environmental water throughout the Basin. Environmental water comes in a variety of forms including:
Minimum flows
Environmental flow rules
Contingency allowances
Tradeable entitlements.
Details of some of these entitlements can be found in the NSW water sharing plans.”
There is a lot of money potentially involved in managing environmental water. Yet it is difficult to access the most basic information.
I suggest there is a need for the type of information detailed here to be pubicly available for all wetland working groups and other managers of environmental water.
There should also be reports showing the environmental benefits of the water allocations as well as how the money from the trades is spent.
When I last contacted the Murray Wetland Working Group (September 2004) they were undertaking no monitoring work as such.
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD is a critical thinker with expertise in the scientific method.
jennifer ,lucky them , our privately owned black – box swamps have no access to free water in victoria to my knowledge . it sounds as though there is some good going on north of the border !
Hi Kartiya
I would be interested to know more about the black box swamps in Victoria and how they are fairing?
As the brother of a man who has just sold his dairy farm due to substantial changes to his water allocation, this issue is very disturbing.
And one must first ask if the private wetlands were grazed wetlands or used exclusively for environmental purposes.
Of greater relevance is the actual timing of the releases in relation to the flow cycle and the duration of the flood event. For my understanding of these ecosystems is that clay layers are such that short term flooding is a total waste of water as it will not have time to soak down to deeper layers. It will only promote surface weed growth and minimal surface tree root growth.
Most of such short term flood water merely evaporates (at half a megalitre/hectare/week).
This whole issue is even more vexing in light of the fact that farmers routinely put water back into the system with no form of credits for these returns. It usually happens when rain falls immediately after they have irrigated and the resulting waterlogged fields are likely to damage the pasture or crop.
One instance was related to me where the entire volume of the rainfall event was pumped back into the chanel to adjust the water balance, at his own expense. Not only did my brother get no credit for this return, the official calculations of water yield assumed that only 10% of that rainfall entered the river system.
This is one bit of so-called public good expenditure that needs a very, very detailed audit.
hello jennifer , re health of the black box swamps . most of the environmentally valuable swamps have very old trees of varying health in them . high salty water tables,brought about by wet years and excessive irrigation over many years has killed many along with their associated grasses . long irrigation drains now snake through the lower irrigation country and through the box swamps heading to the murray .with the cost of water going up, water is taken from them for reuse or stockwater .floods never make it to the swamps or if the do they are quickly drained . until we quickly have access to similar environmental rehabilitation water schemes these unique and valuable sites will slowly but surely die and disappear from the victorian northern plains .
we need either some of the murray environmental allocation or we need the victorian government to buy irrigation water for the purpose .
Hi K
When I was researching for my review ‘Myth and the Murray’ (http://www.ipa.org.au/publications/publisting_detail.asp?pubid=249 ) I could find good data on water table levels and salt levels for the Murray Irrigation Region (i.e. see page 10 of the review) but there was just no data available for Victoria. I think a lot of good work is happening in NSW, but am not so sure about the Victorian side of the river – yet the Victorian government is claiming to already be giving so much more water back as part of its commitment to the Living Murray, COAG etcetera. Do you have any data/access to data for the regions you are referring to i.e. historical data on water table levels/salt levels in these swamps? Also aren’t any of these areas covered by Ramsar or some other protection plan?
hello jennifer , re black box swamps and water tables northern victoria ,you could give the dpi a call at kerang [0354521266] and speak to hamish downs . he monitors water tables and vegetation in sensitive areas .
i trust any info will be used with balance. too often i see only one side of an argument put , especially in the nsw rural press which i’ll admit makes me cranky but i suppose it keeps me fired up .cheers, kartiya .