Under the plan, released late last month, the Murray-Darling Basin Authority has separated the Northern and Southern parts of the Basin – drawing a line over the northern perimeter of the Lachlan and Lower Darling catchment areas.
Under this scheme, the Northern Basin will have to return 390GL of water while the Southern Basin must return 2360GL of water.
In the Guide to the Basin Plan, released 12 months ago – with much acrimony – the Northern Basin had to return 630GL while the Southern Basin had to return 2370GL.
The latest plan has also outlined local reductions – detailing how much water must be retrieved from each catchment area in the MDB – and shared reductions. The Goulburn catchment must return 344GL, the Victorian Murray 253GL, the Murrumbidgee 320GL and the NSW Murray 262GL.
In the Northern Basin, the Condamine catchment must find 100GL of savings. It has not outlined how the shared reductions (143GL from the Northern Basin and 971GL from the Southern Basin) will be divided.
The draft plan states the Government has already recovered 1068GL, leaving a gap of 1682GL.
The MDBA is proposing that no more than half this gap (840GL) will be met by 2015, at which point a review will consider whether environmental objectives are being met.
Australian Dairy Industry Council chair Chris Griffin says the MDBA has recognised that the dairy industry in northern Victoria will be among the hardest hit if the Commonwealth keeps buying water to meet the 2750-gigalitre target.
"We urge the Authority and the Commonwealth to use this consultation period to set a sustainable diversion limit that balances the needs of the environment and regional communities."
ADIC water taskforce chair Daryl Hoey says the water recovery target recently released was around 40% of the annual average water used by agriculture across the Basin each year.
"This means permanent drought for farmers and regional towns," Hoey says. "The dairy industry wants the Authority to analyse whether the environmental watering objectives can be achieved using the water bought so far and saved in infrastructure works planned and underway.
"We support strategic water purchases for the environment where they are linked to water-saving infrastructure projects. But there shouldn't be any more general buyback tenders in the southern connected system before the proposed review in 2015, when it will be clearer whether that water is even needed once environmental works and other measures are taken into account."
Griffin says dairy farmers have already made great gains in water efficiency, but a permanent reduction in water availability on this scale will inevitably lead to severe and lasting decline in irrigation-dependent regions.
He says the Commonwealth already owned more than 1000GL of water previously used for irrigation.
"This is on top of 800 gigalitres of water saved before 2009, and there's even more to come from water saving infrastructure projects planned and underway."
