Community leaders demand 'voluntary contribution' water refund from government
Community leaders agreed to work together to "claw back" water from the NSW Government at a Build More Dams meeting last week.
The meeting attendees agreed to lobby the state government to return "voluntary contributions" of water, which have been siphoned from Griffith irrigators since 2002.
Griffith irrigators had been giving up five per cent of their high security allocations and 15 per cent of their general security allocations, which translates to billions of dollars worth of water - and magnitudes more in today's water prices.
Businessman Darren De Bortoli said the government's justifications behind the voluntary contributions had been based on dodgy science, and Griffith irrigators deserved a refund.
"It was based on a fundamental lie; the lower lakes were never a freshwater system, they were an active estuary," Mr De Bortoli said.
Griffith City Council and Leeton Shire Council's mayors also agreed to support the lobbying efforts and urge other councils within the Murray Darling Association to join suit.
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The committee also agreed to lobby the state government for a feasibility study into the Clarence River diversion scheme that was suggested by engineer David Coffey.
The scheme would capture Clarence River water in dams and pump it into the Murray Darling system.
Committee chairman Dino Zappacosta said these kinds of alternatives needed to be seriously looked into to prevent the encroaching death of the basin, its irrigators, and the communities it supports.
"I think it's important we show some leadership and say listen - people are not happy, the systems not working well enough for us," Councillor Zappacosta.
The third and final motion agreed upon by the committee was to take an official stance and throw their support behind a royal commission into the Murray Darling Basin Plan.
The committee will be joining the ranks of the NSW Farmers Griffith branch, which has also recently thrown their support behind a royal commission.
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