At least 200GL of water savings lost as 14 projects dumped

Peter Hunt | The Weekly Times

Senior water bureaucrats have scrapped 14 Murray-Darling Basin projects worth at least 200 gigalitres, raising fears the federal government will strip more water from irrigation communities.

Projects aimed at reviving floodplains and saving water have been dumped, after years of debate and millions of dollars in state and federal funding.

Senior state and federal water bureaucrats have dumped 14 floodplain and constraints projects that would have contributed more than 200 gigalitres of ecological water savings towards the Murray Darling Basin Plan.

The move has been widely anticipated, since The Weekly Times first reported on the Basin Officials Committee warning in 2022 and again in 2024 that many of the Sustainable Diversion Limit Adjustment Measures projects would not be delivered on deadline, leading to a potential shortfall of up to 340GL.

The SDLAM projects were meant to allow environmental water to be used more efficiently, in the hope of delivering environmental benefits equivalent to 605GL per year towards the Basin Plan.

But now irrigators fear without these projects, the federal government will wade back into the water market to strip even more water entitlements from irrigation communities to make up the shortfall.

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