Water sharing and irrigation in the Macquarie region has been cast under an ugly spotlight in national media this week, with members of the public labelling the alleged actions of one irrigator in particular as un Australian.
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Readers awoke on Saturday to open the Sydney Morning Herald, which reported that an unsolicited modification of licences for irrigators on the Macquarie River had allowed water earmarked for protecting one of the most important wetlands in the Murray-Darling Basin to be diverted for a cotton crop.
The article went on to say that documents obtained by the Herald show farmers were alerted a year ago by the NSW Department of Industry's water division to changes of the conditions on their unregulated water licences. That prompted the Office of Environment and Heritage to seek to nullify the changes' impact.
The SMH author said that one stakeholder, who declined to be named, said he "sat here in shock" when the letter from the water department arrived. "It was like a gift from heaven."
The change effectively gave permission for the licence holders to extract environmental water flows even though they had been paid for by taxpayers in both NSW and the Commonwealth.
Enabled by the new rules, Michael Egan, owner of the Kiameron farm near the eastern side of the marches, alerted agencies of his plans to pump environmental flows even as the drought across the region intensified.
Between September 9 and October 5 last year, the farm extracted about 600 million litres of a 10 billion-litre flow headed for the marshes, assisting the irrigation of his cotton crop.
"When it's in an unregulated part of the system, [the agencies] lose control of the water," Mr Egan told the Herald. "I'm just running with the rules." The Sydney Morning herald quoted Mr. Egan as saying.
The SMH also author also stated that The Commonwealth Environmental Water Office said "most of the flow was protected from pumping by licence conditions". Still, the agency was continuing to work with NSW agencies "to address anomalies in the licencing framework and improve the protection of environmental flows".
The Murray-Darling Basin Authority said it had alerted the NSW Natural Resources Access Regulator (NRAR) to investigate the matter after "satellite monitoring of environmental water picked up images of water being diverted".
It said amendments to NSW's Water Management Act would "allow environmental water to be left in stream for environmental purposes".