Deniliquin Pastoral Times

MIL in­fras­truc­ture show­cased to chair

- England · Leeton · Mulwala · Albury

‘‘We’re now at a point where, af­ter all the many re­views that have been un­der­taken, we want to see ac­tion to im­prove out­comes for all Aus­tralians.’’

That is the mes­sage Mur­ray Ir­ri­ga­tion Lim­ited chair Phillip Snow­den said was im­pressed on the new chair of the Mur­ray-Dar­ling Basin Au­thor­ity last week.

Sir An­gus Hous­ton made his first of­fi­cial trip to the Rive­rina last week, and spent much of the Wed­nes­day with MIL tour­ing ir­ri­ga­tion in­fras­truc­ture and dis­cussing the chal­lenges faced by lo­cal farm­ers.

Sir An­gus was ac­com­pa­nied by MDBA CEO Phillip Glyde on the trip, which started in Lee­ton on Mon­day and also in­cluded vis­its to Grif­fith, Jer­ilderie, Fin­ley, Blighty, Mul­wala and Al­bury be­fore the tour ended on Fri­day.

Mr Snow­den said Mur­ray Ir­ri­ga­tion is com­mit­ted to work­ing with the rel­e­vant agen­cies to find a healthy bal­ance of wa­ter dis­tri­bu­tion for ir­ri­ga­tion and en­vi­ron­men­tal needs.

‘‘There’s some great op­por­tu­ni­ties to im­prove sys­tem ef­fi­cien­cies that can con­trib­ute to pos­i­tive en­vi­ron­men­tal out­comes and re­duce the threat of fu­ture buy-backs, for only a frac­tion of the wa­ter when com­pared to flood­ing,’’ he said.

‘‘We know that river man­age­ment is com­plex and that the MDBA has a dif­fi­cult role bal­anc­ing the needs of all wa­ter users across three states and var­i­ous stake­holder groups.

‘‘Mur­ray Ir­ri­ga­tion is keen to work with them and other rel­e­vant agen­cies to find so­lu­tions to the many ex­ist­ing prob­lems and sus­tain our farm­ing com­mu­ni­ties.’’

MIL CEO Philip End­ley said they left the meet­ing feel­ing ‘‘con­ver­sa­tions around the unique chal­lenges we face here were con­struc­tive’’.

‘‘We know there’s a lot of frus­trated farm­ers out there and it’s im­por­tant to ex­plain why this is the case. Es­pe­cially the un­in­tended third-party im­pacts of wa­ter re­form and the Mur­ray-Dar­ling Basin Plan in its cur­rent form.

‘‘It was great to do so face-to-face, which has been dif­fi­cult dur­ing the pan­demic.

‘‘It was also a chance to ex­hibit some of our in­fras­truc­ture in­clud­ing the Law­son Syphon and the Mas­cotte Es­cape, which en­ables lo­cal en­vi­ron­men­tal wa­ter­ing.’’

?? ?? ■ MIL chair Phillip Snow­den with MDBA chair Sir An­gus Hous­ton and CEO Phillip Glyde at the Mas­cotte Es­cape near Wakool.
■ MIL chair Phillip Snow­den with MDBA chair Sir An­gus Hous­ton and CEO Phillip Glyde at the Mas­cotte Es­cape near Wakool.

Newspapers in English

Newspapers from Australia