"How much water to you actually need for the environment?" he asks.

"Tell me the figure, prove it to me, and I'll work with you to achieve it."

He's not confident of a straight answer. The new Murray-Darling Basin Plan, released last November, is seeking 2750 gigalitres of irrigation water for the environment, but it

does not explain how it derived that figure.

It is lower than the figure of 3000-4000GL called for in the initial plan, released 12 months earlier. And far lower than the 7600GL the Wentworth Scientists said was needed.

McKeown expects he would get a similar response to a question asked to a MDBA staff member at a recent public forum.

He said when the staff member was asked how they plan to deliver the environmental flow through the Barmah Choke there was silence.

"They didn't know. What do they do in Canberra?" he asks. "It was a straight forward question."

The Goulburn Valley will be one of the hardest hit districts under the proposed Basin plan, which effectively suggests removing 537GL from the region, 95GL more than the initial guide.

McKeown said the uncertainty of the plan was creating the most concern in the district.

"There is nothing in the plan that tells me what they are going to do. They just say they want 2700GL to flush out to sea. Then they'll go back and have a look in 2015 to see if they need more.

"And if we go into above average rainfall, what are they going to do with it?"

McKeown milks 320 Holstein cows on 200ha at Yarroweyah.

"We've proven you can farm here without irrigation water but you won't make any money.

"We got to the end of September in the first year of the drought and we had no hay, no water, no feed, and the paddocks looked like that track," he said, pointing to the ground.

"We had 320 cows and 100 young stock to feed. I rang a bloke and said how much hay do you have in the shed? I'll take the lot.

"The Basin Plan will have that same impact on the area. We did it to survive short-term, and that was three years."

McKeown told Environment and Water Minister Tony Burke at a meeting in the district last November that he could take his water but the Minister would have to take his cows and farm too "because it's worthless without it".

"I'd like to get Craig Knowles here and emphasise what we do. Emphasise that you take water away and we've got nothing."