Gin Gin Weir debate flowing fast
A CAMPAIGN opposing the new $30 million Gin Gin weir has been condemned by the Mayor of Narromine, Craig Davies, who blamed the movement for “demonising” farmers and spreading “straight out untruths”.
Launched by Healthy Rivers Dubbo and authorised by the Nature Conservation Council of NSW, the campaign titled “Don’t Damn The Macquarie, No New Weir” lists the supposed implications of the proposed weir using newspaper advertisements as well as posters around Dubbo and television and radio ads.
The advertisement states the planned re-regulating gated weir and fishway structure will “allow private landholders to suck more water out of the already struggling river” and “back the river up for 30km behind 20 metre gates, raising the level of the river by six metres”.
According to the campaign, the weir will drown centuries-old Red Gums, have impacts on native fish, and deprive the Macquarie Marshes of vital tributary flows.
Responding to the claims made in the campaign, Cr Davies, who is not an irrigator himself, described the ads as “sensationalist”.
“The poor old farmers are being demonised in all this and all they are trying to do is earn a bloody living, for Christ’s sake,” he told Dubbo Photo News.
Cr Davies said “no person gets one drop more water” and explained how local water license holders, many being cotton growers, may benefit from the project.
“The water that is released from Burrendong Dam for water orders, particularly for that northern Warren area, takes up to 10 days from the time of release to get there,” he said.
“Now if the guys down there get three or four inches of rain and suddenly say, ‘Crikey, I’ve got nowhere to put that water because my fields are flooded,’ then (the weir) is the logical place to pull that water up and to just hold it there until the next water order, otherwise it’s lost to the irrigation industry and just ends up in the Marshes.” Cr Davies also shut down suggestions the weir would kill the riverside Red Gums, and negatively impact the Macquarie Marshes, where he coowns a property called Burrima.
“We are trying to conserve the Marsh, we are trying to do the right thing by the ecology out there, but we are doing it in a practical way,” he said.
“We are not trying to stop production for farmers or for local economies.”
Additionally, Cr Davies said the irrigation industry and the Narromine Shire put between 8000 and 12,000 fingerlings into the water each year, and the proposed weir would have a fish ladder.
Earlier this month, Macquarie Marshes grazier John Thornton wrote a letter to Dubbo Photo News which described the weir as “unnecessary and unfair”.
“If this weir does proceed, it will again demonstrate what we are doing wrong with how we operate and manage our rivers, by taking the water from the many who benefit from its presence downstream and handing the water to a minority few upstream, while disregarding the environmental and socioeconomic harm throughout a system already in distress,” Mr Thornton wrote.
Member for Dubbo Dugald Saunders said all perspectives will be taken into account before the final business case is handed over later in the year.
“Waternsw is holding further consultation in August 2020, with a variety of groups involved, in an effort to ensure everyone has a chance to have their say on the project,” Mr Saunders said.
“Following final business case approval, further engagement activities will be planned, and environment assessments conducted to further inform the finalising of the environmental impact statement due early 2021,” he said.