The New South Wales government’s main proposal to deliver on its promises under the Murray-Darling Basin plan is expected to be a project for the Menindee Lakes involving a visitor centre, but almost no additional water for the environment.
The Murray-Darling Basin plan aims to address the historic over-extraction of water by agriculture and return water to the environment. Most of this has been done by buying back entitlements to extract water from farmers, but the final part of the plan involves projects to use water more efficiently, leading to environmental benefits.
Water ministers will meet in late February to review the last stage of the plan. The federal water minister, Tanya Plibersek, is likely to be confronted with a proposal from NSW, known as the better Baaka project, that includes fish ladders, improvements to weirs, a plan to keep more water in Lake Cawndilla and a visitor centre.
But the project will deliver almost no water for the environment. The plan includes a strategic buyback of just 15GL, and no other quantified water savings.
NSW had claimed its earlier proposal, known as the Menindee Lakes project, would save up to 106GL of water towards the target of 605GL under the sustainable diversion limit adjustment mechanism (SDLAM). This mechanism had been agreed by all states as an alternative to buybacks, with states arguing there were smarter ways to achieve water savings than simply withdrawing it from agriculture.
NSW, with support from upstream irrigators, had argued that reducing the size of the Menindee Lakes, making them deeper and operating them differently could save 106GL lost to evaporation.
But a scathing report by Prof Richard Kingsford, director of the Centre for Ecosystem Science at the University of New South Wales, and others has cast doubt on the science behind the 106GL estimate.
The paper in the international scientific journal Ecology and Society and its accompanying report found the project lacked rigorous evidence and community consultation. Kingsford said the study showed the project had been misguided and poorly framed from the start.
“We identified project failures, particularly lack of transparent explanation of how this water could be ‘saved’, and inadequate consultation with local communities, including traditional owners,” Kingsford said.
It also found that flows into the lakes from upstream had diminished significantly over the last century, leading to a 68% decline in waterbird numbers.
‘Robbing Peter to pay Paul’
One of the main problems with the original NSW proposal was it would have destroyed a highly significant sacred site of the Barkindji people at the junction of the two main lakes.
“This is another good example of governments looking for a simple engineering solution to a complex problem,” Kingsford said.
“Basically, governments were in such a hurry to find an engineering solution to water savings for the basin plan, they just rolled out the Menindee Lakes project, which had been on the NSW water agency’s books for more than 20 years. It is a classic case of robbing Peter, the Menindee Lakes environment, to pay Paul, the environment in the rest of the basin.”
Zoe Ford, a UNSW PhD candidate who led the research, said there was “little rigorous evidence or modelling made publicly available to explain how water savings would be achieved by the project, which has a significant financial cost to taxpayers of $151.8m”.
“More concerningly, these proposed water savings made up a substantial proportion – up to 25% – of the additional 450GL of water to be recovered for the environment through efficiency measures,” Ford said.
The researchers found that in the NSW government modelling for the Menindee Lakes primary planning document, only one source (4%) was peer reviewed. A large proportion (41%) of relevant, freely available, independent and peer-reviewed information was not used.
“It makes a mockery of using the best available scientific evidence for making decisions on water under the Murray-Darling Basin plan,” Kingsford said.
“The first plan was flawed,” he added. “We don’t want the second plan to go the same way. At the moment there is no clarity about what it involves.”
The Murray-Darling Basin Authority said it was not responsible for reviewing NSW claims of water savings. Its initial role was “only to determine the volume of the adjustment of the projects that Basin governments notified, assuming they were implemented as notified”.
Graeme McCrabb, a Menindee local and water activist, said residents had been kept in the dark about what the latest plan was and there had been little consultation with the traditional owners or the town, which relies on tourism.
“NSW [water] minister Kevin Anderson has been asleep. There has been no consultation on the better Baaka.”
Anderson told Guardian Australia the NSW government considers community consultation to be crucial when it comes to decisions about the Murray-Darling Basin.
“Ministerial council agreed in 2021 that NSW would work to rescope the Menindee Lakes water savings project, which is now part of the Better Baaka program,” he said.
“It’s aimed at improving water security, while delivering economic, cultural, and environmental benefits for regional NSW.”
• This article was amended on 8 February 2023. A previous version incorrectly attributed NSW government modelling for the project to WaterNSW.
