GREAT Artesian Basin water saved by farmers from Queensland, NSW, South Australia and the Northern Territory at considerable expense is about to be auctioned off for new users.
The NSW Government is preparing to sell new water licences in the Great Artesian Basin (GAB) from water saved as part of the long-running cap and pipe the bore scheme.
But some farmers who have undertaken the expensive capping and piping exercise to help save water in the basin are furious the Government could still consider selling off the savings, especially at a time when the Federal Government is buying up vast tracts of water entitlements from farmers for the environment.
They question what incentive there will be for farmers to continue to invest voluntarily to save water if the Government then turns around and sells it.
There are now calls for the Rudd Government to step in and override next month's sale.
The NSW Government will make 30 per cent of water saved through the cap and pipe the bore scheme in NSW available for new and existing users to buy for the purposes of tourism, mining, irrigation and other regional developments.
It will be sold off at a series of auctions in coming months.
The remaining 70 per cent of water will be left for the environment, and proceeds from the sale will, according to the Government, be put back into the cap and pipe the bore scheme to help fund further upgrades throughout the NSW portion of the Basin.
The auction was part of a pre-existing national plan for the GAB to return some of the huge forecast savings from capping and piping free-flowing bores to communities so regional development and investment could continue in some form.
NSW Minister for Water Resources, Phil Costa, recently announced the sale of 1,200 megalitres of water saved from the Central, Warrego and Surat groundwater sources of the GAB and a special auction will take place in the NSW North West town of Walgett on July 21.
The Great Artesian Basin is one of the largest underground sources of water in the world, underlying one-fifth of the Australian continent across 1.7 million square kilometres.
A strategic management plan for the GAB was developed in 2000, with a subsequent voluntary program encouraging farmers to turn off free-flowing bores and bore drains and pipe water to central points to stop massive water wastage through seepage and evaporation and help rescue huge drops in artesian bore pressure.
Mr Costa said this was the first auction of water saved from the cap and pipe the bore scheme and more would occur depending on the response to this one.
He said he hasn't heard of any concerns about the sale so far, and believes the water sold will generate new economic activity and jobs in regional communities.
"We need to use this opportunity to drive further stimulus in rural regions, including more cap and piping," Mr Costa said.
"The artesian basin is not at risk.
"Each area in the basin is a discreet basin, that's what I've been told. We don't expect at all that there's going to be a risk in terms of supply."
Former national chairman of the Great Artesian Basin Consultative Committee, John Seccombe, said redistributing water savings made from the cap and pipe the bore scheme was always part of the strategic plan for water reform in the GAB.
Mr Seccombe a farmer from Muttaburra, near Longreach, was for 10 years the driving force behind the cap and bore program when it first started.
He says some of that saved water should be divided up for consumptive use, but questions why the savings would be coming from the three basins mentioned.
He said the Warrego and Surat basin regions in particular were two of the most degraded in the entire GAB in terms of decimated bore pressure and he thinks selling 30 per cent of water saved in those areas was "probably too high".
"There was a lot of waste occurring in the first place – 95 per cent of the water which went through old free-flowing bores was wasted," Mr Seccombe said.
"So the scheme is delivering considerable water savings.
"But in areas highly degraded there is a considerable amount of water which would need to be left."
Mr Seccombe said while he believes new industries, like feedlots and mines, should still be able to apply for a water licence to allow the opportunity for regional economic activity to continue in the bush, he does not like the idea of auctioning off all savings in all areas.
Liberal Senator, Bill Heffernan, has slammed the move and says it is an insult to the major water savings made in the GAB and the goodwill of farmers to cap and pipe their bores.
Senator Heffernan said the NSW Government will soon resort to "selling anything that's not bolted down" and wants the Federal Government to put a stop to the auction.
"The science on the recharge in the GAB is not even known," Senator Heffernan said.
"To sell off the savings when millions of dollars has been spent creating them is bizarre and an insult to the logic of the savings and the goodwill of the farmers who have done this work at their own expense.
"Farmers have been doing all the good work in this area; now the Government is coming in and robbing Mother Nature. Those savings belong underground – permanently."
Email a friend