ANIMAL and human health is under threat and the environment is starting to falter along the Lower Darling River, as the Far West NSW water shortage continues to worsen.
There is only about a month‘s worth of water left in certain sections of the river, but its quality is quickly reducing.
Many landholders have bores and some rain water, but others have resorted to carting water for stock and domestic, as no relief has been indicated by the weather bureau or the NSW government.
Lower Darling irrigator Alan Whyte, at Jamesville Station between Wentworth and Pooncarie, said the situation was a blatant failure by government policy.
“Stock and domestic water supply is obviously the highest priority at the moment,” he said.
“But the next most important is high security irrigation licences for permanent plantings, which we have here.
“The next most important is general security licences, and then right at the bottom is supplementary and high flow licences. They are the lowest priority licences, yet there are a lot upstream and they have been able to operate.
“If they had embargoed those low priority licences in January, when they had all that rain, there would be enough water in Menindee to let the Lower Darling River wet up again.”
Instead, the Menindee Lakes is only at 3pc of capacity and most of the Lower Darling River below it is dry.
There haven’t been fresh flows into the Lower Darling since mid-December 2015.
Mr Whyte said at least 30,000mgL would be needed to wet the Lower Darling River up.
“Last time this happened, we needed about 3500mgL/day for 12 days to get water down to us at Jamesville – and this time it is much drier,” he said.
“It is cooler weather at the moment, so we may not need that much, but it can’t be wet up too slowly, otherwise there will be major fish kills, like has happened in the past.”
Mr Whyte said they had enough water to get their citrus crop off next month, but if no significant water came down the system by August, few growers in the region would attempt to grow another crop.
He said other than water carting, the government had offered no other short-term solutions to the situation.
Long-term, the six irrigation properties along the Lower Darling have put forward a proposal to the federal and state government which suggests they sell their high-security water entitlements to the commonwealth (about 1160mgL), pull out their permanent plantings and use Murray Darling Basin program funding to establish new enterprises on their farms adapted to less secure water entitlements.
Mr Whyte said the government were yet to make a decision on that proposal.
A spokesperson for DPI Water said they were committed to closely monitoring the conditions and water availability for Lower Darling water users.
“The Wilcannia gauge measured a peak flow rate of nearly 600mgL/day on March 15 but has now fallen to 100mgL/day and flows will probably cease within the next week or two,” they said.
“Beyond this flow event there is no significant flow in transit upstream and no foreseeable rainfall of any significance.
“The Darling River is likely to be reduced again to series of pools in coming months after another failed 'wet' season - the first time in more than 120 years of streamflow records that three consecutive years have failed to produce a significant replenishment flow for Menindee Lakes.
“If sufficient water becomes available the two emergency pools in the Lower Darling will be replenished from the Menindee system to sustain critical needs and permanent plantings.”
A public meeting is planned for Pooncarie on April 6 to provide information for landowners having to deal with the severe water shortage.
