Last week we saw another leak of proposed water cuts in the soon to be released draft Murray-Darling Basin plan (see post from last week).
On the back of that I thought it was worth revisiting internal advice from the Authority (attached FOI – MDBA Review of Env Objectives (3) and reported in The Australian here) released via FOI a few months ago to Liberal Senator Simon Birmingham.
The advice was requested from the Murray-Darling Basin Authority chief executive, and was prepared by the Authority’s director of natural resource management. It is from December last year, before key staffing changes including a switch of CEOs.
The advice finds the ‘‘weakest’’ modelling type was used for the basin guide released last year, producing SDL recommendations of 3,000 to 4,000 billion litres of water a year. The modelling process has now been revised for the full draft basin plan due November.
It also says early revised modelling indicates 2,800 billion litres of water a year emerged as enough to meet the environmental requirements. It is interesting that 2,800 gigs pops up this early and continues to hold in last weeks leak of later modelling.
These two points have been widely canvassed to date in the media.
But there is also an interesting set of recommendations and discussion about reviewing high end flows for the southern part of the basin (think Barmah and Gunbower) and the level of protection afforded to international recognised wetlands under the Ramsar convention (which drives water requirement demands in the southern Basin).
High end flows resulted in some of the bigger environmental watering results in the basin guide (up to 7,600 gigs depending on the level of environment protection). The advice says such flows in the southern basin will be ‘‘difficult to deliver’’ because of the degree of regulation and inherent risk to third parties of trying to manage and ‘‘add’’ to moderate and higher floods (essentially the risk of flooding nearby properties via environmental flows). It also states water obtained via buy-backs will not be ‘‘suited’’ to meeting peak flows 2-3 times a decade.
The document also looks at the Authority’s scope to reconsider the level of protection for Ramsar wetland sites. It recommends ‘‘limits of acceptable change’’ contained in the convention to the ecological character of a wetland does not need to be taken as a ‘‘given.’’ The advice argues the limits were set without active consideration of trade-offs between environmental, social and economic factors and can be considered aspirational.
But the advice comes with a warning. Dropping higher flows reduces the amount of floodplain that can be protected. That would test what is meant by ‘‘not compromise’’ assets in the Water Act (which legally underpins the new Basin Plan) and challenges the Ramsar ‘‘limits of acceptable change.’’
Later the advice suggests if the Authority decides to walk away from the Ramsar limits of change it opens itself to public challenge, though any challenge is unlikely to be successful because Ramsar is non-binding.
Are these the areas someone from the green side of the debate would mount a legal challenge to the basin plan, depending what decisions are made in the draft and final version?
At any rate they are something to watch when the draft is released in a couple of months, especially if its final recommendations stays at or drops below 2,800 gigs.
Until then we wait for the next leak.
