FLOOD PLAIN HARVESTING : CRIKEY.COM

[watereddy]

The Four Corners program raised doubts about any chance of an
independent decision by the Murray Darling Board.

It also covered the backlash from irrigators questioning the need to
release a minimum of 3000-4000 gigalitres pa for the sake of the
environment.

There seems to be a complete denial of the simple fact that without
guaranteed protection and ongoing restoration there will be no such
thing as a Murray Darling River at all. Just a creek full of salt.

The other blind spot is the ongoing, unregulated massplunder of water
due to flood-plain harvesting.

The following is from Crikey.com.

Levees and the lack of regulation that could cost millions
Crikey Canberra correspondent Bernard Keane writes:
BARNABY JOYCE, LEVEES, QUEENSLAND FLOODS, ST GEORGE, WATER
REGULATION
When Kylie Kilroy first raised the problem of how the unregulated
construction of levees in the Balonne Shire was making flooding in her
area worse in 2010, she never thought she’d be vindicated so quickly
and so spectacularly.

And rest assured she’d prefer it otherwise.

Kilroy lives in a property just down the Balonne River from the town
of St George. Like much of southern Queensland, this is flood plain
country. It’s also the home of Barnaby Joyce and, further downstream,
the ultimate testament to unregulated water usage, Cubbie Station.
Cubbie is only one of many large irrigators and commercial
agricultural interests in this part of Queensland.

After the floods in March 2010, Kylie began pointing out something
that a lot of irrigators and big cotton farmers didn’t want to hear –
that floods smaller than the area had historically seen were reaching
higher and further. Crikey aired her concerns in July last year. Her
property, on a bend on the Balonne about nine kilometers downstream
from St George (top right hand corner below) was directly affected by
a levee on the property across the river, called Kia Ora:


Kia Ora is a 12,000 hectare cotton farm bought for $60m in 2008 by the
Cayman Islands-based Eastern Australia Agriculture. Prominent critics
of foreign investment in Australian agriculture expressed no concerns
at the time about the sale. Hamish McIntyre, who oversees Kia Ora and
other EAA projects in the area, didn't return Crikey's phone calls.

As journalist Phil Dickie showed long ago, the St George area has
witnessed decades of skewed and bizarre corrupt water management
policies, providing an unregulated, pro-irrigator framework that
encouraged the development of the vast Cubbie dams that trapped
overland water flows that would otherwise eventually find their way
into the Murray-Darling system across the border. The legacy of those
decisions, and the problem of un- and under-regulated water usage,
continues today, perhaps stronger than ever. Building levees is
unregulated, despite their impact on the hydrology of overland flows
and major flooding events. There is no state regulation of levees, and
in Balonne Shire, no local government regulation. You can build a
levee wherever you like on your property, regardless of how it may
affect the path and extent of flooding across the area.

The Kia-Ora levee can be seen in the photo above, the thin line
running down the middle, west of the river. Kilroy claims it increased
the height of the March 2010 floods, sending all her property
underwater. The Kilroys did their best to protect their property as
the water came up to their floorboards, until the Kia-Ora levee broke.


Kilroy’s efforts to draw attention to the issue were ignored.
Politicians and journalists refused to return her calls. But then, the
rains came again, over the New Year, and floods rolled through St
George less than ten months after the previous deluge. As the floods
were just the first of a series of natural disasters to overtake
Queensland, they've now all but been forgotten.

Between the March 2010 breach and this year's floods, the owners of
Kia-Ora had rebuilt the levee, back to its 7m height. Eastern
Australia Agriculture had inherited the levee with the property from
its previous owner, Glenn Graham, but now they increased the height of
the levee by a further 50 cms.

To be clear, they did so entirely legally. The law is silent on the
issue of levees, no matter what its impact on the hydrology of floods
in a landscape designed for periodic flooding. The owners were acting
entirely within the law.

The Kilroys say the levee once again lifted flood levels, again
inundating their home. This time, however, it affected other
properties, too – major cotton properties rather than just family
farms.

The threat to millions of dollars’ worth of crops was sufficient for
an urgent meeting to be convened on 5 January involving
representatives of Balonne Shire, the owners of Kia Ora, local
irrigators and other property owners. The Kilroys were not invited to
attend, despite the meeting vindicating the exact concerns they had
been raising throughout 2010.

Tempers were rising about the issue. After an argument with a Shire
Council executive at the height of the floods over the issue, Kylie
was charged with public nuisance and placed on a good behaviour bond.

At the 5 January meeting, Crikey understands and has independently
verified, the option of blowing up some levees, including the Kia-Ora
levee, was discussed, so great was the flood threat to other crops. In
the end, the meeting broke up without resolving how to proceed.

The essential problems in Balonne Shire remains: there is no
regulation of levee building, and no apparent interest on the part of
Balonne Shire Council to address the lack of regulation (its CEO
declined to return Crikey’s call). St George is a small town and multi-
million dollar corporate agriculture and irrigation companies dominate
it. Corporate agriculture speaks with a powerful voice in this town,
louder perhaps than local residents. In the absence of regulation, big
property owners will take what action they can to protect millions of
dollars' worth of cotton crops.

The scale of the problem may be starting to get through, however.
Senator Joyce, who is not merely a local but shadow minister for
water, told Crikey in a written statement

“I am aware of the concerns in the Balonne area that levies in
particular places may have exacerbated flooding in other places. My
understanding is that hydrologists have been engaged to investigate
this issue. I would expect that this enquiry and the Queensland Floods
Commission of Inquiry would investigate these matters fully and I
would be guided by their decisions and recommendations before coming
to any view on this matter.”

In response to Crikey’s query about support for a Senate inquiry,
Joyce responded, “I note that there are already two inquiries in the
hydrological management and productive capacity of the Murray Darling
Basin in the Senate and the House of Representatives. Concerns raised
in the Balonne area would be appropriate matters to be investigated by
these inquiries.”

In the interim, the levees remain, and so does the regulatory gap that
permits them. The next flood will again see the Kilroys inundated,
forced to turn their front porch into a sanctuary for stock, while
they wonder if the reinforced levees will give way and let the water
drain away.



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