Don’t approve the water sharing plans that will lock in another decade of unsustainable overextraction and kill our rivers.

Any day now the NSW Government is set to sign off on new plans for how water in key inland rivers, including the Barwon-Darling/Baaka, is shared between big irrigators, towns, First Nations people and other communities downstream, as well as the river itself.

Make no mistake, if approved, these plans will be a disaster for our rivers and the communities and wildlife that depend upon them. The Government has learned nothing from the many expert reviews arising from the devastating fish kills at Menindee and the drying up of the Darling/Baaka River as a result of years of years of water mismanagement. 

The Environment and Water Ministers are set to sign off on water sharing plans that ignore the recommendations by experts and will repeat the mistakes of the past. If approved, these Water Sharing Plans will lock in at least another decade of unsustainable levels of take by big irrigators in the northern Murray-Darling Basin. If approved, these Water Sharing Plans will lock in massive allocations of water to big irrigators resulting in dry river beds and more fish kills.

To protect our rivers and wetlands we need to make sure there is enough water flowing right through the river system and isn’t pumped out by big corporate irrigators and stored in massive private dams.