Page 5173 - Week 12 - Wednesday, 27 October 2010
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of avoiding the worst outcomes for the community, rather than avoiding the median outcomes.
These figures are indicative of the costs to the ACT community if the proposed sustainable diversion limit is applied to the ACT. These real and significant costs on the ACT would only be avoided by water trading to increase the sustainable diversion limit or the current cap by the transfer of water rights. In the territory’s view, water trading as proposed by the MDBA is not an economically sound solution. In the ACT’s case, we can trade from the lower Murrumbidgee, but that part of the catchment is already significantly over-allocated and, in any case, it gets its water from the ACT, where sound management has ensured comparative under-utilisation of water resources. We would be effectively paying for the water that we were releasing from our dams in increased environmental flows.
If that is the outcome the MDBA want, and which the commonwealth ultimately signs up to, then the territory’s view will be that it does not make a lot of sense, but if it must occur then the commonwealth should compensate the territory for those water purchases and basically allow us to purchase that water. But you have to question the logical nature of the proposal. Water that is released downstream in environmental flows then has to be purchased by the territory so that we can use it. It just does not make a lot of sense.
I welcome the authority’s actions to commission new works to determine the socioeconomic impact of the proposed plan. This work is reportedly expected to be finalised in March next year. The government will be looking to make sure that that work takes into account the socioeconomic impacts on the ACT of the MDBA’s proposals.
The government sees the long-term risk arising from the guide as the failure to provide for ACT population growth. The irony, of course, is that this growth can be expected to be caused at least in part by population shift from rural areas in the basin as a result of changes in allocation under the guide. This fact is reinforced by the fact that we are not recognised in the ACT itself as being a prudent water manager, setting aside water for the environment as a first action and ensuring minimal water use by the community. To give members some idea of the implications, a population of around 700,000 Canberrans would require 70 gigalitres net per annum, representing just over 15 per cent of water raised in the territory or 30 per cent after providing for environmental flows.
The guide presupposes that the sustainable diversion limit targets would be met by water trading under the commonwealth water for the future program to provide some 2,000 gigalitres of the overall target for the basin. In the Murrumbidgee catchment, only 64 gigalitres have been acquired under water purchasing, leaving a need to acquire an additional 615 to 846 gigalitres. The balance of water needed would be bridged by continued buying back of surface water entitlements. It is not clear how this would operate in the ACT’s case, where its present water rights—a 40-gigalitre net cap—for potable water cannot be traded and the ACT has no substantial permanent water allocations for surplus water that the commonwealth can purchase. These are all unanswered questions.
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