Submission to Environment and Natural Resources Committee, Inquiry into Rural Drainage within Victoria February 2013 This page left blank. xxxxxxxxxxx TABLE OF CONTENTS 1. Introduction………………………………………………. 4 2. Background………………………………………………… 4 3. Legislation…………….…………………………………… 5 4. Status of Rural Drainage in Victoria………………………. 7 5. Existing Rural Drainage Scheme Management Arrangements 9 and Types…………………………………………………. 6. Key Issues………………………………………………... 9 7. Environmental issues associated with Rural Drainage…….. 10 8. Future Arrangements for the Management of Rural Drainage 12 in Victoria…………………………………………………. 9. Achieving clarity with Strategies and Plans………………... 14 1. Introduction This is a submission by the Department of Sustainability and Environment (DSE) to the Victorian Parliament’s Environment and Natural Resources Committee’s Inquiry into Rural Drainage within Victoria. This submission has been prepared by DSE in consultation with the Department of Planning and Community Development, however does not represent a policy position of Government. 2. Background Altering water flows across landscapes to improve the liveability of towns and to enhance the productivity of land has been practiced for over 150 years. However, while communities serviced by drains benefit, costs may be transferred downstream where the drainage water is discharged. Costs may include waterlogging and flooding, damage to public infrastructure and damage to the environment with erosion of waterways and an influx of nutrients or salinity causing water quality to deteriorated. In addition, drainage schemes can affect environmentally valuable wetlands. Drainage removes water from one location to another – usually onto neighbouring property, or onto a public road, a public culvert, or a public waterway. Individuals often need to collectively invest in a drainage network to provide drainage services efficiently and effectively. It requires collaboration, coordination and joint investment. Responsibility for providing drainage services in Victoria are based on the principle that those that gain a benefit from drainage should pay for the service. Based on this principle the long standing responsibilities for drainage for Victoria are: • local government have the primary responsibility for operating and maintaining, drainage systems servicing towns and their road network • Melbourne Water is responsible for the arterial drain network in Melbourne with local government responsible for all catchments with and area of less than 60 Ha • Water corporations with irrigation responsibilities are responsible for providing drainage services to their irrigation customers. • Land holders are responsible for providing drainage within their property (land holders may group together to develop community drainage schemes) • State Government is responsible for legislation to regulate the provision of drainage services including the offsite impacts of drainage on third parties and the environment. The costs of providing general drainage services are met through the rating base. Groups receiving higher levels of service may pay additional drainage rates. For example, irrigators pay drainage rates to their water corporations calculated on a fee for service basis and Melbournians fund Melbourne Waters drainage costs through a specific charge on their water bills. Unlike irrigation and urban drainage, rural drainage is typically carried out on an ad-hoc basis with the focus increasing in wet years. As witnessed over the recent 12 years of drought, little effort was placed on maintaining rural drainage as the need for the service was significantly reduced. For the purposes of this document, the definition of rural drainage is generally considered to exclude drainage of irrigated areas (designed to remove rainfall runoff), and drainage of urban areas (designed to remove rainfall runoff) which is considered to be adequately supported and managed through Rural Water Corporations (Water Act), Local Government (Local Government Act) and the Planning & Environment Act 1987 (Vic.) legislation. There are some exceptions to the rule worth noting, where in some cases rural drainage systems do not Page 4 cover the whole of the catchment upstream of their point of outfall or outfall through or to natural drainage lines that pass through urban areas. Small drains at the farm scale accumulate water and discharge to larger community drains (often including road-side table drains), and then outfall to waterways, lakes, wetlands and estuaries. DSE estimates that there are over 30,000 km of rural drains across Victoria (in addition to that located within irrigation areas or towns). The majority of drains are located on private land. There is estimated to be between 130 and 150 drainage systems spread across Victoria which service over 1 million hectares of predominantly agricultural land. Whilst drains can improve agricultural productivity in a localised area, they can also present a risk to nearby assets such as public roads, waterways and wetlands. Rural drainage systems may have negative impacts on environmental assets within the catchment, in the waterway of the drain or in the receiving waterway. Drainage has impacted on the State’s wetlands, including significant areas of Victoria’s freshwater marshes and meadows. The effluent carried by drains can also be high in salt, nutrients, sediment and agricultural and commercial chemicals, all of which can have a detrimental impact on receiving waters such as lakes, rivers and estuaries. In addition, in some cases larger waterways and channels that receive drainage water have eroded, presenting a risk, rather than protection, to public assets such as bridges, roads and power lines. Historically, rural drainage has been undertaken at a variety of scales, from the individual landholder up to large drainage schemes involving thousands of hectares of land. For example, in the Glenelg Hopkins Catchment Management Authority (CMA) area in the west of the State, there are 23 gazetted (i.e. formal) drainage areas, and a further 22 private or informal schemes, together draining approximately 200,000 ha of land. In the past, a number of drainage schemes were funded by a combination of private and public contributions, where Government subsidies matched landowner contributions to fund capital works, after which landowners met the ongoing maintenance costs. As a result of the repeal of the Drainage Areas Act 1958 (Vic.) in 1992, most drainage works are now operated under the Local Government Act 1989 (Vic.) and the Water Act 1989 (Vic.). Drainage schemes were typically managed by local government, through drainage Trusts or some being established as River Improvement Trusts or similar entities. When Catchment Management Authorities (CMAs) were established in 1997, the Water Act (Part 10) enabled (but did not require) CMAs to manage rural drainage as successor bodies particularly for some schemes. CMAs now manage about 7 or 8 schemes with the remainder vested with local government. At the time, the CMAs also had the power to raise a tariff to fund work such as regional planning or ability to locally rate for drainage services. Some CMAs prepared regional drainage strategies in the late 1990s, with 6 of the 10 CMAs having completed strategies in place. These strategies found that drainage infrastructure was in poor condition, that public assets such as roads were threatened by erosion particularly in larger modified waterways, and that drainage was found to be harming environmental values in some areas. Historic urban, irrigation and rural drains were also often designed without due regard to their downstream impacts. 3. Legislation The repeal of the Drainage Areas Act in 1992 saw the responsibility for any gazetted Drainage area resting with the relevant Local Government under the Local Government Act 1989, unless responsibility was transferred to some other public organisation under the Water Act, 1989 . The relevant sections of these Acts are described in more detail below. Page 5 • The Local Government Act 1989 ( Vic.) o Section 86 - Special Committees of Council Allows a council to establish a special committee made up of a combination of councillors, council staff and other persons. This committee does not have the power to declare a rate of charge, this must be done by the Council under s.162; o Section 162 – Service rate and service charge Empowers the Council to declare a service rate, or an annual service charge, for prescribed services. o Section 163 – Special rate and special charge Empowers Council to declare a special rate or charge for the performance of a function which the council considers the person paying the rate is benefiting from. Declared rates or charges may only be applied to situations of defraying expenses or recouping debts. o Section 198 – Sewers and drains vested in the Council This is an important section that states that Councils are responsible for public drains, and drains along roads, unless they have been vested in some other public organisation. Therefore, Councils are the default managers of drains in Victoria. Following are the exact words of the section: . s.198 Sewers and drains vested in the Council (1) The following are vested in the Council and are under the management and control of the Council— (a) public sewers and drains within the municipal district; (b) sewers and drains in and under roads in the municipal district; (c) Works and materials relating to (a) and (b). (2) This section does not apply to any sewers