Irrigators right to be dam angry
AN EXTRA release of water from Tinaroo Dam this week has the Mareeba/Dimbulah irrigators hopping mad and for good reason when the dam is below 50 per cent.
They say they are already cutting back production to deal with lower water allocations from the dam.
These currently are at 66 per cent of their entitlement and believe further cuts will follow.
Water is periodically released to maintain a healthy Barron River as well as providing sufficient quantities to be used by the Stanwell Barron Falls power station and for other uses such as Mareeba town water.
So here we have conflict again between users and owners of this resource and all because, in the traditionally wettest part of Australia, we cannot store enough water. This is frankly a disgraceful situation.
Many of us have long noticed we live in a time of grand and unrealised visionary announcements.
Make no mistake. The announcing and the ribbon cutting is the easy part. The doing is the hard part.
Let’s talk about Nullinga Dam. Like so much, this is a regional project that has been talked of for some time. Since 1954, in fact, and I have a copy of an original report.
It has been studied, reported on, studied again and again. The latest was completed by the State Government using $5 million of federal funding at the end of March with the outcomes available by the end of May. Still we wait with no answer on a revised date. We are held hostage again by political shenanigans.
The state owns the water and infrastructure, but needs federal monies to fund it.
The money we are advised is there, but, as the state procrastinates, that money will go elsewhere and so yesterday Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce was advocating for the Rookwood Weir at Rockhampton and the pressure is ramping up for raising the wall on the Burdekin Dam to accommodate hydro.
All this, despite the fact that the Nullinga Dam, along with the Ord augmentation project in Western Australia, was listed as the top two national water infrastructure projects for Northern Australia two years ago right here in Cairns.
There was back slapping aplenty. At long last Nullinga was off life support and into the recovery ward.
So what went wrong? Very simply when you have two levels of government involved in building infrastructure you need some decent management and agreed responsibility and accountability for outcomes. This has not happened as again politics and indecision intervenes.
In the case of the current issues facing this region, failure to manage water will pit farmer against farmer, urban against rural and community against community.
Already there is a conspiracy theory doing the rounds on the Tablelands that, as Cairns grows, they will just buy all the water they need from the current scheme when they need it and leave the farmers with ever diminishing options.
Those city folk down there in Cairns cannot be trusted, I am told. Guess what? That just might be the outcome unless we deal with this water issue now and ensure the region has enough water to provide for urban growth, industrial growth, a booming agriculture sector and some in reserve for those dry times.
The recent census results tell us quite clearly that our region is the fastest growing in Northern Australia.
Cairns is growing faster than any other city north of Brisbane. We are growing faster than Darwin.
This wake-up call was sorely needed and is yet another example of regional planning failure.