‘Magic Pudding’ policies led to dying rivers, fish kills and dead platypuses. Is this the answer?

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The NSW government is proposing to dramatically slash the times when water can be taken from 11 inland rivers on environmental grounds, in what would be the biggest change to river management in a generation.

The move to radically rewrite four water-sharing plans in the Murray-Darling basin comes after the three-yearly State of the Environment report released in June painted a devastating picture of inland river health, as well as repeated blue-green algae blooms and mass fish kill events such as at Menindee in 2019 and 2023.

Millions of fish died near Menindee in outback NSW in March 2023.

The proposed rules would protect wildlife including fish, frogs, turtles and platypuses by requiring water licence holders to cease to pump when there is not enough water in the river. The previous rules emphasised the volume of water entitlement based on a long-term average river level.

Professor Richard Kingsford, a river ecologist and conservation biologist at the University of NSW, said it was a significant change to deal with the problem of rivers drying out, especially as the climate became hotter and drier.

“We’ve treated rivers as a Magic Pudding that you can go to whenever and however you like,” Kingsford said.

“We know these rivers are vulnerable during intense droughts, and we’ve got to keep enough water in the river for the native fish and turtles and platypus to survive, so that when another flow comes along, they can actually go back and repopulate the river.”

Ninety per cent of the water in the Barwon-Darling River comes from tributaries in NSW and Queensland.

Taronga Zoo has built a large purpose-built platypus conservation centre in Dubbo for protecting the animals during droughts.

However, the changes will be controversial because they are likely to drastically shrink the number of days licence holders can access water. While cease-to-pump rules affect when licence holders can use their entitlement rather than the entitlement itself, the minimum flows in these draft plans is expected to put the rivers off-limits to human use for most of the year.

For example, at Boorowa River, a tributary of the Lachlan, the number of days a year that water take would be banned would be likely to rise from an average of 61 to 204, based on the river flows over the lifespan of the previous plan. In the upper Namoi and Macdonald Rivers, which feed the Barwon-Darling, the number of days water would be off limits is predicted to rise from 33 to 91.

NSW Irrigators Council chief executive Madeleine Hartley said the proposed rules could mean little or no irrigation from some river systems, and this could trigger compensation for irrigators.

The Macquarie-Wambuul River at Wellington in the NSW Central West.

“There are big businesses out here, there are also small businesses out here – the point being that all the businesses are helping sustain regional economies, and that’s really important,” Hartley said. “Water is the life source of these regional communities, and every change can have big impacts.”

Hartley said irrigators had “reform fatigue” because of constant changes over the past 25 years since the Water Management Act was passed in 2000. Government should fund research to measure the environmental benefits of the changes, she said.

The 11 rivers are part of five river valleys – Gwydir, Namoi and its tributary Peel, Macquarie-Wambuul, Bogan, and Lachlan – that criss-cross inland NSW. (There are four water sharing plans because artificial connections between the Macquarie-Wambuul and Bogan mean they are managed together).

Wentworth Group of Concerned Scientists chief executive Celine Steinfeld said the proposed changes were the most important since the introduction of the Murray-Darling Basin Plan in 2012.

“They signal a real shift in thinking on the part of the NSW government, in that managing water in rivers of NSW has often taken a long-term, historical average approach, and that ignores the physical reality of how much water is in the river system at the time,” Steinfeld said.

Along most inland rivers, Steinfeld said, evaporation exceeded rainfall, which meant they relied heavily on upstream flows from up to a thousand kilometres away.

The Namoi River near Walgett in north-western NSW.

The plans out for consultation mention vulnerable, threatened and endangered species such as Murray cod, eel-tailed catfish, Bell’s turtles, and several species of frogs.

“We’ve treated rivers as a Magic Pudding.”

UNSW Professor Richard Kingsford

Kingsford said platypuses died in the Gwydir and Namoi rivers and their tributaries during the 2019 drought. Since then, Taronga Zoo has built a mega-facility in Dubbo that can hold up to 50 platypuses for the purpose of rescuing them during droughts.

The Lachlan River is the chief tributary of the Murrumbidgee, which intermittently flows into the Murray, while the other main river valleys feed the Barwon-Darling.

The 10-year water sharing plans must be signed off by both Water Minister Rose Jackson and Environment Minister Penny Sharpe.

The NSW Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water consulted on rolling over or making minor changes to the plans last year, but these plans were not approved by the ministers.

The previous plans expired on June 30, and the department is now consulting until October 8 on a more radical update. NSW Water Minister Rose Jackson said no decisions had been made yet, and community feedback would be considered.

“These are 10-year plans so it’s important we get them right to ensure we balance the needs of all water users and the environment,” Jackson said.

The water sharing plan for the Barwon-Darling itself has also expired, and a new plan with minor changes is being considered alongside these four draft plans.

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