THE state government has released a significant new policy for the South East.
PIRSA released its Limestone Coast - Development potential for Agriculture, Forestry, and Premium Food and Wine from our Clean Environment report earlier this month, which uses climate, soil and water data to show how the region's agriculture industry could be expanded, and potentially host production for other regions that may have to relocate under climate change.
It follows the release of a different report earlier this year that earmarked the region for unconventional gas extraction, with Petroleum Exploration Licenses covering well over 15,000 square kilometres in the SE.
The new report does not mention mining at all - instead spruiking the Limestone Coast's fertile soils and groundwater resources in an effort to attract future investors to its agriculture, dairy, horticulture, viticulture, forestry and fishery industries.
"The report has focused upon agriculture and food potential and not upon mineral and energy resources," State Agriculture Minister Gail Gago said.
"It has drawn deeply on the use of mapping to identify land suitability for a range of crops and for intensive livestock development."
Under a scenario of general global warming, the Limestone Coast and the availability of irrigation water could potentially encourage the relocation of irrigation sectors under water pressure in their current locations.
"This might include winegrapes, fruit and vegetable producers that can achieve good economic conversion of purchased water to product," Ms Gago said.
"PIRSA see this as an investment attraction opportunity with interstate and international operators looking for new production areas to meet growing global demand."
Central to this is the increased use of the region's groundwater, with the report stating that endorsed water licenses within the Limestone Coast have consistently remained in excess of actual demand.
"Of the 1119 gigalitres of indicative allocations available as at 2010-11 for use each year, actual average demand between 2006 and 2011 was approximately 384gL or 34 per cent," it states.
"The main opportunity will come from utilisation of these unused allocations and the change to volumetric conversion will provide opportunities for operation of a water transfer market."
Groundwater in the region is mostly sourced from two aquifers, the upper unconfined aquifer and the deeper confined aquifer.
The unconfined aquifer is the principal source of water, but its quality varies across the region and suffers from high salinity levels in some areas.
The confined aquifer is mainly used for agriculture and, while salinity levels were lower, so was its general yield.
National Centre for Groundwater Research and Training, School of the Environment research associate Nikki Harrington said the report gave a very good overview of the capacity for water resources in the region and clearly stated that declining groundwater levels, rising salinities, the risk of seawater intrusion and reduced flows to dependent ecosystems were all factors at play.
"Therefore, although allocations are not fully utilised in many management areas, the presence of these issues meant that careful management and assessment of any new developments was required and reductions to allocations were likely in some areas," she said.
There had been many "excellent" technical studies undertaken on the region's water resources and further work was ongoing for a groundwater system that was "very complex".
The water deemed available for allocation had been determined based upon the best available science and the estimates were generally considered conservative and adequate to protect the resource.
"However, there are still components of the system that we do not fully understand and therefore we cannot entirely predict what the local or regional impacts of the full utilisation of water allocations would be," Dr Harrington said.
* Full report in Stock Journal, November 28 issue, 2013.
