THE new water laws proposed by the NSW government have been welcomed by SA irrigators, but according to SA Murray Irrigators chairperson Caren Martin, they are about 20 years behind schedule.
“It is good what they’re doing, just everyone else has already done it,” she said.
“It seems like an initiative SA did about 20 years ago, which evolved into the water resource plans we have today.”
While SA developed its own plans, Mrs Martin said the NSW laws and regulations would be different because of the nature of its system.
One element of the proposal that caught Mrs Martin’s eye was the floodplain harvesting policy, which would impact five of the northern NSW valleys.
She said harvesting policies in NSW were not introduced when the MDBP sustainable diversion limits were negotiated, and she would be interested to see the outcome and how the policy would work.
Mrs Martin said the “big step” in NSW managing water usage would give SA irrigators further certainty, along with providing additional data towards the plan.
“Up until now, all of the water management in NSW has been done at a state level,” Mrs Martin said.
“By bringing in all of these water resources plans, and bringing it back to a local and valley level, it can be scrutinised as to where the water is going – as opposed to a holistic total which gets juggled around on paper.
“This is another part of the jigsaw puzzle that pulls together the whole MDBP.”
