CLARENCE ENVIRONMENT CENTRE INC 31 Skinner Street South Grafton 2460 Phone/ Fax: 02 6643 1863 Web site: www.cec.org.au E-mail: [email protected] Date: 10th April 2018 SUBMISSION to Department of Industry on the Water Reform Action Plan Introduction The Clarence Environment Centre (CEC) has maintained a shop-front in Grafton for over 28 years, and has a proud history of environmental advocacy. The conservation of Australia's natural environment, both terrestrial and and marine, has always been a priority for our members, and we believe the maintenance of healthy ecosystems and biodiversity is of paramount importance. As a major contributor to the protection of the largest river system in coastal NSW, the Clarence, the CEC is determined to ensure that the River's relatively pristine ecosystems are not vandalised, and to improve outcomes for all rivers in Australia. This submission will focus on local issues and concerns, using case studies from the Clarence Valley. However, we strongly suspect that the concerns raised will be relevant across all of NSW and possibly Australia. Discussion This submission focusses on two aspects of water use: 1. Harvestable rights water for irrigation, and 2. Water extraction from rivers for irrigation under licence. Currently on the north coast, neither of the above require the pumps to be metered, although 'noises' are being made in relation to metering some river extraction licences. Harvestable rights grant landowners the right to construct dams on 1st and 2nd order streams, large enough to hold their total entitlement. They can even destroy native vegetation in the process, as dam building is considered a routine agricultural management action (RAMA), and therefore exempt from native veg laws, all without the need to seek approval. The recent 'explosion' in the establishment of blueberry farms in the Coffs Harbour Shire is now rapidly spreading northwards into the Clarence Valley, and this complete lack of regulation is about to come back to bite the authorities that are turning a blind eye to what is happening. In fact those authorities are actively obstructing concerned community groups like the CEC from pointing out the obvious pitfalls that are looming. To illustrate those pitfalls we will present a case study on the largest blueberry operation yet to start up in the region, a multinational enterprise being developed at Bawdens Bridge on the Orara River. According to the proponents media releases in both the Grafton Daily Examiner and The Land newspaper, the development will see 800 hectares of their “Linden Park” property planted to blueberries. As of April 2018 no blueberries have been planted, but preparation of the land, mounding the rows, laying irrigation pipes, and covering with black plastic sheeting, is well under way, with more than half the planned area already completed and work still progressing. According to the DPI blueberry growing fact sheet, there is a need for water storage of between 2 and 3 Megalitres per year per hectare, and the question has been asked by the CEC, where is the water going to come from in this instance? The Linden Park property has a harvestable right of 90Ml per annum, and a large dam to hold that amount of water has already been constructed. The proponent has also purchased one 66Ml pumping licence, and possibly more, to pump from the Lower Orara River system, which comes under the Clarence River Water Sharing Plan that was gazetted in mid 2017. To successfully irrigate the planned 800 hectares of blueberries in a dry year, the proponent will require a minimum of 2,000Ml a year. Unfortunately, the total available water under licence from the Lower Orara River is 670Ml annually – do you begin to see the problem? Even if the proponents buy every available licence, they will only have 760Ml, sufficient to irrigate 300 hectares at most. Again we ask, where is the additional 1,240Ml of water going to come from? The Orara River System is already under stress. The following images were taken along the Lower Orara at the peak of what is normally our wet season, in 2016 and 2017. 1. Bawdens Bridge pumping site, at the end of the wet 2. The Lower Orara River at Poley Bridge, 19th season 8th April 2016. Maximun depth, less than 10cm February, 2017. Maximun depth again less than 10cm Flawed base-line flows figures The current Lower Orara allocation of 670Ml annually, has been calculated using average flows measured over many decades. However, since 1924, until only 3 years ago, those flows have been boosted by water drawn from the Nymboida River to drive the Nymboida hydro-electric power station, latterly by as much as 800Ml daily. That power station no longer operates and has been decommissioned. However, no adjustment has been made to the available water for irrigation as a result of the shut-down, meaning that, in our opinion, the river's water is now over-allocated. Failure to consider cumulative impacts Linden Park is not the only large blueberry development, there is another 1,000 hectare property just 3km to the north which is also being readied for blueberries. How many hectares we do not know, but the large 1000ML harvestable rights storages that has been built on the Deep Creek catchment, will divert yet more water from the Orara. But that's not all; multiple blueberry farms are being established at Glenreagh, Kremnos, Halfway Creek, Kungala, Lanitza East, Lanitza West, Waterview Heights and Qwyarigo, and every month sees more and more land acquired by the industry. All of them are located within the Lower Orara River catchment area, and nobody in authority knows how many properties or hectares are involved, how much water will be needed, or where it will come from. Technical and tactical errors Another issue of concern, is the cease to pump trigger, 20Ml/day flow, is read from the Glenreagh gauge. That gauge is at the up-stream limit of the Lower Orara, and there are 30 licence holders downstream, all of whom are entitled to pump, some up to 12Ml/day, as long as daily flows at Glenreagh remain above 20Ml. The problem as we see it is that no matter how much water is extracted from downstream of the reference gauge, the flow reading there remains static, allowing pumping to continue unabated, until there is nothing left to pump. This is nonsensical, and raises the question, why has WaterNSW done that if not to allow unfettered pumping to occur? Then there are the practical issues relating to pumping from a river with a 150mm pump. For most of the year water depth at the proposed extraction point on the lower Lower Orara River is less than 45cm (see image #1 above, and real time graph below), making it impossible to use a 150mm pump as proposed without the construction of a weir or other structure across the river. Damming the river will not only stop vital sedimentary flows, but will ensure that no water flows downstream when droughts occur, and we believe that, faced with job losses and industry collapse during a drought, authorities will inevitably be forced to waive all restrictions on pumping to rescue the industry. With endangered Eastern Freshwater Cod, numerous other threatened species, and the fast disappearing Platypus known to depend on the river, the natural environment will be the loser once again. Flawed assumptions relating to harvestable rights We touched briefly above on the diversion of possibly 1,000Ml of harvestable rights water from the Deep Creek catchment, a tributary of the Lower Orara. Well, every one of the dozens of other blueberry operations are doing the same, tens of thousands of megalitres every year are being captured by dams, water that will never find its way into the main river. Now, a closer look at harvestable rights (HR). There is no requirement for an irrigator to meter their pumps, and they can have storages (dams) big enough to store their entire annual entitlement. The problem is, the water can be pumped out and the dams refilled over and over just as long as the water flows into them. With no metres or compliance monitoring, no one has any idea how much water is being used. Compliance monitoring and enforcement Current compliance monitoring and enforcement effort can be summed up in one word – Zero. This fact has been exposed by the ABC on its 4 Corners program, which reported that one over-zealous compliance enforcement team was disbanded after reporting multiple cases of water theft from Tablelands' rivers. The situation locally is best summed up by the CEC's own experience through monitoring of DPI Water's real time website which shows flows in many of the state's rivers, including the Orara. In particular, we noticed that from November 2016, through to January 2017, during one of the driest and hottest summers on record, the real time flow graphs from the Bawden's Bridge gauge showed that some 8 to 10 megalitres of water was being pumped out of the Orara every day, or night (see screenshot image below). Note at left the 'saw-toothed' image as water is pumped out daily on this real-time data screenshot. Note also the blue line registering water depth which never exceeded 360mm at any stage during that month. That screenshot ends on 8th December, no significant rain fell until March 2017. We have the other screenshots showing pumping continued throughout. We estimated that close to the entire 670Ml available for extraction under licence, was taken during that period. As a result, we contacted WaterNSW asking if the withdrawal was legal, i.e.