The Victorian Murray Floodplain Restoration Project consists of nine projects located along the Murray River that aim to return a more natural flood regime to a total of about 14,000 hectares of high-ecological-value Murray River floodplains in Victoria.
The scheme was designed to manage flooding through the modification of existing infrastructure and construction of new infrastructure.
Friends of Nyah Vinifera Park Inc disagree with this approach and are taking the Federal Environment and Water Minister Tanya Plibersek to the Federal Court. The case started on April 8.
The friends group, based in Swan Hill, is represented by Environmental Justice Australia, which says this is the first challenge to engineering projects designed to recover environmental water for the Murray-Darling Basin.
The group said the project would do damage with earthworks, steel or concrete and environmental effects should be achieved through natural flooding from water allocated to environmental flows.
“The Victorian Government wants to spend many millions of dollars creating levee banks and installing large pump stands and water regulators at several locations along the Murray River ... to divert water onto selected floodplains,” Environmental Justice Australia said.
The Vinifera and Nyah projects are among the smaller Murray Floodplain projects proposed with maximum inundation areas of 335 ha of floodplain and 475 ha of floodplain.
The projects would require construction of infrastructure such as regulators, containment banks, drop structures and access tracks.
According to a government report released in 2023, this infrastructure would allow engineered environmental watering of the floodplains to occur within the project inundation areas, with the objective of restoring and enhancing the floodplain environments, their ecosystems, biodiversity values (particularly listed threatened species and communities), water quality, and cultural values.
The Nyah Floodplain Restoration Project is 30 kilometres north of Swan Hill.
The total construction footprint proposed for the project is 10 ha.
“Operation of the proposed structures within the Nyah water management area would be coordinated to achieve environmental watering targets,” the Victorian minister’s report from 2023 said.
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