Healthy Rivers Dubbo has been extremely disappointed in the Murray-Darling Basin Authority’s approach to the 10 year review of the Murray-Darling Basin Plan.
We found the discussion paper the Authority released as a guide to submissions led people away from considering the really important questions that the review must legally look at.
With these critical questions not directly asked by the Authority, it is inevitable that the Murray-Darling Basin Plan 10 year review submissions What We Heard report does not reflect the extent by which the Basin Plan is missing it’s legal obligations.
In our submission to the review, Healthy Rivers Dubbo showed unequivocally that:
- The objectives of the Water Act 2007 are not being met
- The Ramsar listed Coorong Lakes, and the Macquarie Marshes are critically endangered and endangered ecological communities, with the Coorong facing a high chance of extinction within 10 years.
- The pumping limits were far to high from the beginning of the Plan, and must be bought down significantly as the science says.
- Cultural water flows have not been returned to Indigenous people.
- The Basin Plan does nothing to address climate change impacts, which are already being felt. Shockingly, the MDBA is not recommending doing anything about that in the next 10 years, despite the Coorong facing a high chance of extinction in the time frame.
- Data and modelling used for Basin water management is inaccessible to the public. Particularly in NSW, opaque data is an enormous problem.
Healthy Rivers Dubbo 