The state government's amendments to water regulations for floodplain harvesting have been trying to push through parliament since 2020. The amendments have been disallowed three times in the upper house because of their contentious nature.

Flood plain harvesting occurs during floods when water is diverted to dams and other areas for uses (like irrigation) instead of letting it take a natural course and return to the environment.

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The amendments are contentious because the government wants to license (divert from the environment) a large volume of water. This extracted water would be more than the amount required to stop environmental degradation according to the Murray-Darling Basin Plan's water recovery target.

The amendments which have been disallowed thrice could be "gazetted" or become legislation, four months after the last disallowance (February 24, 2022).

Melissa Gray, ambassador at Healthy Rivers Dubbo, says if this legislation were to go ahead, it would only benefit the "most privileged few".

"It's an enormous jump backwards for communities; for First Nations cultural values and existence, for the environment, for the Ramsar listed wetlands , groundwater aquifers, for the lot," she said.

"We have seen the massive fish kills in the lower Darling, we're seeing really short lifespans in places like Wilcannia, we've seen the Macquarie Marshes sink by two thirds in recent decades, because all this water is being taken."

Floodplain harvesting had been common practice for decades without needing approval, mostly because the environmental impacts of this practice had not been examined.

In 2012, the government agreed that water management needed to improve and created the Murray-Darling Basin Plan to protect water for future generations. Which is why approvals and licenses are now coming into effect to regulate this practice.

After two years of disallowances delayed the issuing of floodplain harvesting licences, irrigators want the government to move forward with the legislation. They had been in a "legal limbo" until now, with many still transferring flows after heavy rains to on-farm dams.

Before the third disallowance in February, NSW water minister Kevin Anderson said consultations had been going on for more than a year and he would not postpone the new legislation. He said regulating floodplain harvesting had been discussed for the last two decades and the time to act was now.

"The momentum is there - there is will across the general stakeholder network as well as the parliament to crack on and get this moving," he told the ABC.

"We need healthy rivers, but we also need healthy farms. I don't think it's one or the other - I think it's both."

A little closer to home in Trangie, the Goan Waterhole is a popular rest stop for locals and travellers coming from Dubbo. It would recharge with water every time the Wambuul/Macquarie broke its banks. Yabbies were abundant in the waterhole, the town even had a yabby festival with a yabbathon.

"The Goan always had fish, yabbies, and it was always a healthy place. Kids swam in it, you wouldn't let your kids swim in it now," Tony Lees, chair of the cultural and heritage committee of the Trangie Local Aboriginal Lands Council, said.

"It's been cut off from it's natural water course and hasn't been recharged since."

According to Mr Lees, in the 1960s, the town looked the other way when cotton came to Trangie and modifications were made to the land. The modifications helped cotton growers store water for irrigation by floodplain harvesting, but also cut off natural flows to the waterhole.

Without the natural flow to flush out the waterhole, a build up of particulate matter led to duckweed growth and also the death of fish.

"We're going to end up with a dustbowl where that waterhole is because we don't get those overland flows," Mr Lees said.

He said the phenomenon was "happening right through the district".

"This is an issue from Burrendong to the ocean, really," Mr Lees said.

"No section of the river is left out of this."

What would happen if the amendments become legislation without any changes?

"It will enshrine the diversion of environmentally unsustainable volumes of water upstream of the Ramsar listed Macquarie Marshes. It would lock in the environmental degradation that we've witnessed," Healthy Rivers Dubbo ambassador, Ms Gray, said.

"The cumulative impact that decades of unrestrained floodplain harvesting has had on the Macquarie Marshes, will never be addressed and assessed."

Ms Gray wants to spread awareness about the future of the Wambuul/Macquarie to make sure the river can keep providing flows downstream.

"[I want to raise awareness] to make sure the Macquarie Marshes have a future, they are the biggest kidneys that the Murray-Darling Basin have got left," she said.

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