Opinion - If you watched Four Corners, maybe keep in mind.....
- By: "Farm Tender" News
- Jul 08, 2019
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This article is bought to you by Extend Security.
By Claire Miller GAICD, MEnv - Director at Claire Miller Consulting Pty Ltd
If you watched Four Corners, maybe keep in mind:
1. While infrastructure works may enable an individual enterprise to use more water, that doesn't mean irrigated agriculture is using more water in total.
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2. The environment now owns 28% of high security and general security water licences in the southern Basin. That's 28% less water allocated for irrigation each year, or 2000 billion litres on average. Nuts, cotton etc can only expand if dairy, rice etc use less from this 28% smaller pool. They all fight this out on the water market - no wonder prices are surging.
3. The works programs in Four Corners require farmers to transfer water licences equal to estimated water savings. If the savings to the farmers are not real, it doesn't matter to the environment: it still gets the licence, which means that much less water is allocated to the irrigation pool.
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4. The farm dams can only store water irrigators have purchased or been allocated. They don't capture runoff (the landscape is too flat), and they don't increase total irrigation take from the river.
5. Serious questions remain about the federal Department of Water's due diligence in administering these taxpayer-funded programs. But it is not right to claim the rivers are getting less water as a result.
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