CRAIG COMMENTS

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Ongoing fight for the Snowy River
Wednesday 16th January 2008

The NSW Government, along with the Victorian and Federal governments, seem to be teetering on the edge of seizing defeat from the jaws of victory with regards to the flows for the Snowy River. 

The three governments still have until 2012 to deliver the majority of their commitments on Snowy environmental flows, but the process has been made considerably harder and more complicated by the litany of failings of the NSW and other shareholding governments. There is no doubt that the NSW Government is still smarting from the failure of their attempt to privatise Snowy Hydro Limited.

Unfortunately for Australian’s who care about the health of our rivers, the main responsibility for management of the Snowy and the implementation of the inter-governmental agreements rests with NSW. But all three governments have a responsibility to ensure that the promises and commitments already made and celebrated by the community are delivered.

The Snowy River Agreement is held as the first major environmental flow agreement reached in Australia. The outcomes only came together after intensive negotiations and community action over five decades and were to be delivered without impact on irrigation security.

When the two state Premiers stood on the bank of the river to celebrate the first water releases, the community looked forward with optimism to the success of the project. However, five years after that historic day, a number of key components of the agreement have still not been implemented and many have been seriously compromised:

• The Snowy Scientific Committee (SSC) which was required to be convened under the 1997 legislation, to provide best practice advice on the management of environmental flows has, after 10 years, still not been established;
  
  
• Governments have allowed Snowy Hydro to turn off the flows over the Mowamba Weir, the same flows that the Victorian and NSW Premiers celebrated the return of five years ago;
  
  
• The outlet works on the Jindabyne Dam have been managed so poorly that downstream the river was heavily polluted with silt from the excavations. To add insult to injury, Snowy Hydro used environmental flows to clean up their mess;
  
  
• Legislation required that a review on the adequacy of the environmental flows be conducted to coincide with the fifth anniversary of the licence. This review was six months late and was only established after considerable public pressure;
  
  
• Information essential to the scrutiny and accounting of the environmental flows is treated as ‘commercial in confidence’ by Snowy Hydro Ltd and is not publicly released.

 
The Snowy water savings targets have been compromised by the competing Commonwealth and State programs for the Murray River, including the National Water Initiative, the Living Murray, the Riverbank Program, the North South Pipeline and more recently, the National Water Plan. If governments expect to provide effective leadership in meeting our water management challenges, then they need to immediately get all of these programs working together.

• Implementing the Snowy River outcomes should have been easy. The three governments were in agreement, the money was on the table, binding agreements were in place and an independent scientific committee providing advice for the management of the environmental flows was to be established. Widespread public support was obvious and governments finally had the opportunity to take sustainable water management into the 21st century.

If the three governments cannot manage the Snowy outcomes, how can we expect the same governments to fix the Murray using the same basic model? Where there are many more competing vested interests and communities, a multitude of catchments across four states, and 29 major water storages.

I believe that the committed environmental flow targets for the Snowy will eventually be reached, but unless the issues surrounding management of environmental releases and government accountability are addressed the outcomes will be seriously compromised. The governments need to get the Snowy right to regain community confidence in water management -- not just for the Snowy, but for all of our rivers.