The Goulburn River off of The Boulevard in Shepparton.
Photo by
Rechelle Zammit
More environmental water is not required for the Goulburn River at the moment, according to a key environmental body which manages environmental flows in the Goulburn and Broken catchments.
Hold tight - we’re checking permissions before loading more content
The Goulburn Broken Catchment Management Authority is warning that higher unseasonal flows pushed down the Goulburn River will negatively affect the health of the river.
And further to that, the Commonwealth water purchases for the Murray-Darling Basin Plan are increasing the risk of more impacts on the ecological health of the river.
The CMA’s interim chief executive officer Carl Walters warned of the impacts at a water summit held in Bendigo on Friday, August 23.
The statements were made in front of the Victorian Water Minister Harriet Shing, and to an audience of community leaders, MPs, water stakeholders and local government leaders.
Downstream demand is creating higher stream flows, particularly for inter-valley trade.
Mr Walters said current entitlement volumes were unable to be fully utilised and modelling suggests additional water isn’t required, even if delivery constraints were addressed.
He pointed to the history of the management of the Goulburn, when inter-valley trade increased from 50 gigalitres to over 400 Gl in a 15-year period.
“It essentially destroyed the characteristics of the lower Goulburn with bank slumping, erosion and declining native fish populations,” Mr Walters said.
“It took us four years to change the Goulburn-Murray Trade rules.”
Mr Walters said the Goulburn River had to be managed better to achieve better environmental outcomes.
“We have about 650 Gl in the Goulburn River system for environmental purposes,” he said.
“We manage that with the Victorian and Commonwealth environmental water holders and community stakeholders.
“We struggle to use what we already have. More water is not going to help our system.
“If you add more water now, it may turn back to the IVT days.
“Our real concern is how do we work together to get an improved outcome for our river system.
“It’s not just about more water.
“Unless something changes in the constraints management world, we can’t use it properly.”
Mr Walters warned against pushing more water down the river to serve lower basin demands.
“We can’t have the Goulburn River treated as a sacrificial lamb to downstream needs,” he said.
“We need more time to work out how to use water more effectively and efficiently.”
G-MW chief executive officer Charmaine Quick told the summit untargeted buybacks in the GMID were in danger of creating the “Swiss cheese” effect, isolating infrastructure and adding costs for remaining irrigators.
“Depending on the volumes recovered from the region in this next round of Commonwealth water purchases and the percentage of delivery shares that are terminated, bills could increase by 12 to 34 per cent for some customers,” she said.
The meeting also received an economic impact statement commissioned by the City of Greater Shepparton, which found government financial support for the region to compensate for the loss of productive water to agriculture, was far lower than support for LaTrobe Valley for the closure of the Hazelwood power station.
The report by consultants Ethos Urban, found the scale of direct job losses at the Hazelwood Power Station (750 direct jobs in 2017) is lower than the estimated number of direct jobs lost across the GMID to date (1380 FTE jobs) as a consequence of the implementation of the Murray-Darling Basin Plan.
The Goulburn River was running high at Arcadia on Tuesday, August 27. Water was released from Lake Eildon into the Goulburn River from August 17.Referred to as a late winter fresh, the water will flow into low lying wetlands between Lake Eildon and Seymour, connecting the wetlands with the Goulburn River. The CMA says this will improve water quality and provide more feeding areas for platypus and turtles.These wetlands also provide important habitat for small native fish and waterbugs.River levels will drop to base flows of 1,000ML/day before the opening of trout season on Saturday 7 September.
