After travelling hundreds of kilometres across arid, scrubby country, traditional owners will arrive in Alice Springs this week ahead of a court date years in the making.
The group is hoping to overturn the largest water licence ever awarded in the Northern Territory.
The right to extract 40,000 megalitres of groundwater from Singleton Station, on desert country north of Alice Springs, was granted to horticultural venture Fortune Agribusiness in 2019.
The water will be extracted for free because, unlike its interstate counterparts, the NT does not charge for large-scale commercial water use.
A study of the company's business case — to grow hay, avocados, onions, mandarins and jujubes — suggests the licence could be worth up to $300 million in other jurisdictions.
When the hearing begins on Wednesday, traditional owners will argue Territory Families Minister Kate Worden failed to "properly" or "rationally" consider 1,600 pages of technical evidence, or consider Aboriginal cultural values.
Documents before the court show Ms Worden was delegated powers to award the licence on a Thursday and re-granted the licence the following Monday.
The decision was delegated by the Environment Minister because of a conflict of interest
"Given the short time between delegation and decision, and the volume and technical nature of the materials, it may be inferred the Minister cannot have properly considered [key evidence]," lawyers for the Mpwerempwer Aboriginal Corporation said in the originating motion before the court.
"The Minister's decision to grant the licence was seriously irrational as no rational minister would have treated the [evidence] so irrationally."
Fortune Agribusiness has argued it has strictly followed every process required of it by the NT government, that it will work closely with traditional owners, and that the project will bring jobs to the poverty-stricken region.
Ms Worden has said she read the review and other submissions before awarding the licence and that her decision to do so was reasonable.
More than 1 trillion litres of water
Over the course of the licence's staged 30-year life span, the project will extract more than 1 trillion litres of water from red dirt Kaytetye country, and according to the project's own estimations it could destroy up to 30 per cent of the region's groundwater-dependent ecosystems.
Most groundwater dependent ecosystems in the area are sacred sites and their potential destruction is driving traditional owner opposition to the licence.
The NT government has said the project is safe, but Graeme Beasley, a traditional owner of Singleton Station, is deeply disturbed by the threat he believes is posed by the licence.
Many of the recommendations made by an expert review panel and provided to Ms Worden were intended to protect the environment and manage the threat to sacred sites by slowing down the rate of extraction.
Visiting and protecting these sites, which include trees, soakages and springs, is vital to Mr Beasley's cultural practice.
"Water is very special to us," he said.
Community leader Derek Walker said the community was not opposed to development — the community owns a small-scale and medium-scale horticulture project — but he said the scale of the Fortune project was of great concern to the community, which felt it could threaten their drinking water and local projects.
"The community will be in the Supreme Court fighting together for our future and our kids' futures," he said.
Fighting for sustainability
A similar case has been brought by the Arid Land Environment Centre (ALEC) and the two judicial reviews will be held in conjunction at a three-day hearing in Alice Springs.
In documents tendered to the Northern Territory Supreme Court, lawyers acting for ALEC allege the Minister for Environment's initial decision to issue the licence was "legally unreasonable" because it did not follow the Water Act.
They allege the licence was not assessed against the relevant water allocation plan and instead it was granted according to a separate set of guidelines that allowed for more environmental damage.
"No reasonable decision maker could be satisfied that the Proposed Decision was in accordance with the [Water allocation plan]," the documents said.
ALEC policy officer Alex Vaughan said if the case was successful, he hoped to see the Territory's water licensing scheme and Water Act come under greater scrutiny.
He said this water licence was one of the largest in Australia and should therefore be managed with extreme caution.
"The largest groundwater licence in New South Wales is 15 megalitres," he said.
"Win or lose, this is about resistance. We will keep fighting and we will unite together for sustainable resource management."
Project in line with NT process
Fortune Agribusiness and the Northern Territory Government declined to comment on the impending court case, but in a statement Fortune chairman Peter Wood said the company had strictly adhered to the processes laid out by the NT government.
"This commenced in December 2015 and is still continuing more than six and a half years later," the statement said.
"Over the years, a considerable amount of investigation and scientific work on water resources, horticulture potential and environmental management in the Western Davenport region has been undertaken by Northern Territory Government, Geoscience Australia, and Fortune Agribusiness."
The company also reaffirmed its commitment to traditional owners and has strongly rejected claims the project will not benefit Territorians.
