I oppose the NSW Government’s bid to license floodplain harvesting. The currently illegal capture of water flowing overland during floods is diverting water from rivers at unsustainable levels.  The rivers are in crisis from over extraction and more water must not be given up to water traders and corporate irrigation.

Licensing and expanding floodplain harvesting will jeopardise the survival of the struggling Murray Darling Basin rivers and wetlands system.

Floodplain harvesting captures rainwater flowing across the flat plains of the north-west of NSW and Queensland using levees and other irrigation channels.

The water is then diverted into large on-farm storages and used primarily to irrigate cotton. Cotton and almond farming, in the driest continent in the world, works against reviving our river and wetlands.

The water storage held by speculators allows for water-trading for profit as our rivers decline and droughts accelerate.

Existing water allocations already remove too much water from the rivers. Taking still more by stopping rainwater from getting into the creeks and rivers will be a disaster for rivers and wetlands and threatens the ecosystem.

If more rain is diverted from the rivers and lands without addressing nationally set diversion limits and impacts on end of system flow fish kills in the Murray Darling, the like of which we saw in 2019 will become more frequent. Fires across our water-parched land, of which we saw in 2020, will become more commonplace. Communities will continue to be deprived of water for drinking and traditional owners denied their cultural rights to water.

During 2020, the NSW Water Minister, MP Melinda Pavey, twice attempted to legalise floodplain harvesting to divert rainwater from the river systems. The proposal was rejected both times due to serious concerns about the health of NSW's river systems.

In 2021, Minister Pavey is again seeking to pass the Water Management (General) Amendment (Floodplain Harvesting Exemption) Regulations (NSW) 2020 and the Water Management (General) Amendment (Exemption for Rainfall Run-off Collection) Regulation (NSW) 2020 plus amendments related to floodplain harvesting.  

The effect of this legislation passing would be to lock in the over-extraction and further privatise water in a water market that is failing all in the Basin.

Charlie-Sue Frail – a Nyamba Woman and consultant to a northern NSW based, Brewarrina Aboriginal elders group said, “There is grave concern about this legislation coming into effect and real interest from the First Nation’s community in mobilising up and down the river."  

"Aboriginal people represent a large majority of the population in the northern basin and yet we control less than 0.02% of water.  The river is in a bad state, it is not sustaining life like it has and there is a great concern about what its future might look like,” said Charlie-Sue Frail.

“It amazes me that they are jeopardising the rivers that sustain over two million people in the Murray Darling Basin,” she concluded.

Illegal and legal pumping of water for agribusiness and floodplain harvesting has robbed the river system of cultural and environment flows.  Small farmers and towns along the river are suffering.  The Government’s floodplain harvesting legislation will further jeopardise the future of economic, social and environmental sustainability in the Murray Darling Basin.

Water campaigners, including Aboriginal Menindee water activist Barry Stone and Ngiyaampaa elder Dr Beryl (Yunghadhu) Philp Carmichael, in a letter to the Prime Minister of Australia and the NSW Water Minister, Melinda Pavey in March 2020, state: "water should not be a commodity. We demand water be taken off the market and water trading ended in Australia. We demand an immediate embargo on river diversion, flood-plain harvesting and the pumping of rivers by irrigators upstream,’

For the sake of wetlands, rivers and our thirsty country, I demand NSW Water Minister Melinda Pavey and all NSW MPs oppose the Water Management bills such as the proposed “Exemption for Rainfall Runoff Collection” and stop planning the extension of floodplain harvesting