Time to pay back the Snowy

Later, the evidence of illegal dams and levees came to light impacting on key wetlands drained and starved of water for farming along with significant ecological damage in the Coorong Lakes, especially Lake Albert a few megalitres away from the acid sulphate substrate soils spitting sulphuric acid to the surface. Similarly, the mouth of the Snowy River at Marlo suffers from the lack of annual snowmelt flushing flows affecting habit for the breeding populations of Australian Bass.

Then came the tax-avoidance managed investment schemes (MIS) forging deep rooted pine plantations into the Upper Murray catchments between Tumbarrumba and Tumut to supply the lucrative packaging cartels with an endless supply of uniform raw material. Anecdotal evidence placed deep culverts ploughed to three metres to capture all rainwater and runoff before vital stream flows reached the upper Tumut and Murray Rivers. Streams that had never dried up - even in the worst of droughts early last century - dried up with, allegedly, the advent of the MIS placing further stress on the Snowy River to supply water to the Murray.

To accentuate the emerging water problems was the separation of water and property rights, the privatisation-by-stealth agenda that saw water commodified instead of remaining as the “commons”, a public natural resource to which all Australians, the environment and irrigators had “reasonable rights”.

Enter the global water barons - the big companies such as Vivendi, Veolia and Macquarie Water. Enter “eWater” lauded by the then Commonwealth Government and Minister for Water with never a mention of the privatisation agenda. The primary phase of “public-private partnerships” is launched and water privatisation is set in motion without a whisper from the press.

From the perspective of the Snowy River, environmental flows are suddenly in never-never land with extreme stresses on the Murray and no real water for the Snowy or for its dying fish population at the mouth that have failed to breed for more than 18 years. The rationale to return environmental flows into the Snowy River - to first find savings in the west - is clearly flawed with massive over extraction from the Snowy to supply the Murray and with the incoming Prime Minister declaring that he simply does not have a silver bullet solution to short-term environmental flows. Nowhere, is there any mention of rolling back cotton and rice production.

By virtue of the major blocks, the Jindabyne Dam Wall, the coffer dam that needs removing and the Mowamba Aqueduct forcing the Moonbah River backwards instead of allowing it to form a temporary natural headwater for the Snowy, the Snowy River immediately below the Jindabyne Dam enjoys little more than 4 per cent natural flows, far less than the Murray.

But there is welcome news. The Federal Minister for Water, Senator Penny Wong, will now control the extractive cap for the Murray Darling. Equally welcome is the decision to establish an independent Statutory Authority to govern the Murray Darling Basin.

On the back of COAG and the new Murray Darling Plan Federal Member for Eden-Monaro Mike Kelly announced the formation of the Snowy Community Advisory Committee to advise him on the future of the Snowy Scheme, the return of environmental flows to the rivers and cloud seeding. The original plan for the Committee was indeed a seat at the table of the Water Administration Corporation and Water Consultation and Liaison Committee established under the Snowy Water Inquiry Outcomes Implementation Deed to which government must comply.

This committee in its genesis also planned to liaise properly with the Murray Darling Reference Group and MD Community Advisory Committee to co-determine water allocations. Key to community involvement is real status including the power to appoint members to the Snowy Hydro Board and clear decision making role and powers. This would, by definition, mean a vote in the timing of water releases from the Snowy Scheme and to whom - whether for irrigation or environmental flows - as well as the retention of drought storages in the Snowy Scheme. At present, these decisions are made behind closed doors with little or no public scrutiny.

This is not the outcome delivered by the Member for Eden-Monaro who sees the SCAC as simply an advisory group with a Labor Party member as the Chair.

The rivers have the right to advocacy. Whether government is able to deliver on legislated targets and whether science and commonsense can prevail over politics, corporate influence and money remains to be seen.

The challenge now is for the Federal Minister for Water to consider extractive caps for all rivers - especially for the Snowy - and change otherwise unfair agreements that demand water savings from one river system before another river system is allowed reasonable environmental flows. The challenge is also to contain corporate purchases of water and the privatisation train that is moving full steam ahead.