Controversial floodplain harvesting regulations are due to start on Monday, but political opponents of the licensing scheme are lodging a second disallowance motion in New South Wales parliament to have them scrapped.
The rules were designed to license, measure, and cap the controversial form of water harvesting, which involves catching and storing water during floods to use later.
The regulations followed 18 months of intense dispute between river communities and environmental groups before they were introduced by former water minister Melinda Pavey days before she was dumped from cabinet.
The licensing scheme is a hotly contested issue with water users and communities in the southern basin arguing it will allow northern irrigators to take too much water.
'Ignored the calls'
Independent NSW MP Justin Field has called on Water Minister Kevin Anderson to hit the reset button and withdraw the regulations.
The laws were knocked back once before in 2021 and Mr Field said the government had not changed anything about them since.
"They effectively have ignored the calls by the community and also the disallowance motions by the Legislative Council," he said.
"We have been calling for better consultation, downstream targets to guarantee community, environmental and cultural needs and more transparency around the modelling and data.
'It's a no'
Mr Anderson definitively said he would not postpone the introduction of the new laws on Monday.
"It's a no," he said.
The Minister said there had been 18 months of consultation as well as two decades of discussion about regulating floodplain harvesting and now it was time to act.
"The momentum is there — there is will across the general stakeholder network as well as the parliament to crack on and get this moving," he said.
"We need healthy rivers, but we also need healthy farms.
"I don't think it's one or the other — I think it's both."
Mr Anderson said the new regulations would return 100 gigalitres per year to downstream communities and that delaying the introduction of the scheme would hurt the southern basin.
"If we don't act now further delays will not only harm the environment ... but farmers downstream are facing reduced access if this policy is delayed," he said.
Irrigators say enough is enough
Northern irrigators have warned those calling for a second disallowance of the rules that they are at risk of jeopardising their own goals.
Gwydir Valley Irrigators' Association executive officer Zara Lowein said the regulations were an essential part of the process to cap floodplain harvesting in the state.
"While I don't fully agree with the impact to downstream communities that is often talked about by some stakeholders, I do think having this licence provides them more outcomes than they're currently allowing it by blocking it and having delays," she said.
"[Regulations] set the machinery for all the other issues that were raised during the inquiry … that work is still to be done, but we do need a signal that licensing has to occur and for that we need the Upper House to agree to allow that to happen."
