When parts of nature die and species are lost, traditional owners like Maureen Jipiyiliya Nampijinpa O’Keefe feel deep grief.
In Kaytetye country, near Tennant Creek in the Northern Territory, life and death are controlled by access to water.
“Water is the most precious thing in the desert,” she says. “You know, we all need water – animals and insects and people and land. It’s what sustains us. Every living thing depends on it.”
Soon, she fears, that water could be at risk. The largest groundwater extraction licence in the country has been granted for aquifers which nourish Kaytetye country. The Territory government granted the 40-gigalitre-a-year water licence to Fortune Agribusiness in 2021, for the development of Singleton Station into a large horticultural farm producing citrus, grapes and avocados, predominantly for the export market.
Traditional owner Maureen Jipiyiliya Nampijinpa O’Keefe, a Kaytetye-Warlpiri woman, is one of the leading voices opposing the groundwater licence
The $250m privately funded project is due to break ground in 2027 and roll out over nine years in four stages, beginning with an initial water allocation of 12,700 megalitres for the first three years. It is expected to extract up to 1tn litres over the 30-year life of the licence.
O’Keefe fears the proposed extraction will damage 40 groundwater-dependent sacred sites belonging to the four Kaytetye landholding groups: Anerre, Waake-Akwerlpe, Iliyarne and Arlpwe. Repeated legal challenges by traditional owners have so far failed. Last week the high court granted the Central Land Council, acting on behalf of rights holders, leave to appeal.
Disturbing the balance
Senior anthropologist Susan Dale Donaldson says 95% of sacred sites across the Singleton water licence drawdown area are groundwater dependent – and therefore vulnerable to any change in water levels.
Donaldson was engaged by the CLC to complete an Aboriginal cultural values assessment of the project in 2021. That community-led assessment, involving 80 Kaytetye traditional owners and neighbouring groups, identified the 40 sacred sites within the licence zone.
The Aboriginal Areas Protection Authority (AAPA) issued an authority certificate for the Singleton development recognising 11 sacred sites in 2019, prior to the granting of the water licence. But in a 2023 submission to an assessment of the project by the NT Environment Protection Authority, the AAPA stated that “the full impact of the proposed Singleton project on Aboriginal sacred sites and Aboriginal cultural heritage is not yet known and requires further survey work and consultation with Aboriginal custodians”.
The AAPA went on to say that Fortune Agribusiness’s claim that the proposal was “unlikely to have direct impacts on sacred sites” was “incorrect and inconsistent with information provided in the report [to the EPA] regarding water drawdown”.
“The removal of water from an Aboriginal sacred site, or other interference with a sacred site, is a direct impact on that sacred site. These actions may amount to a criminal offence under the Northern Territory Aboriginal Sacred Sites Act 1989,” the submission reads.
Fortune Agribusiness says it “has and will comply with the terms of the authority certificates issued by the AAPA” and was investigating the connectivity of the underlying aquifers to assess potential impacts on sacred sites, as per a condition of its water licence.
In a statement to Guardian Australia, the company added it was “consulting with Traditional Owners to deepen our understanding of the nature and location of cultural values and sacred sites beyond the project area footprint, and to work with them to mitigate potential impacts of drawdown”. A comprehensive assessment of potential cumulative impacts of aquifer drawdown will be included in the environmental impact statement (EIS) for Singleton Farm, due to be submitted to the NT Environment Protection Authority in 2026.
‘Every drop has an impact’
For Kaytetye people, loss of biodiversity is more than an ecological issue – it signals a disturbance to the spiritual equilibrium of the physical world. “Because that water was there for a reason, you know, to keep this world in balance. Otherwise we spiral out of control,” O’Keefe says.
Prof Peter Cook, a senior hydrogeologist from Flinders University in South Australia, says the same. “There is no magic amount of water that you can use that won’t have an impact on the ecosystem – every drop you take has an impact,” he says.
Cook is also concerned that extracting such large volumes of water may have impacts on salinity. Aquifers in South Australia have seen significant impacts due to groundwater extraction on arid land.
Independent hydrogeologist Dr Ryan Vogwill says he has doubts about the modelling used by the NT government in calculating the potential impact of the water licence. Recharge and drawdown figures differ between different regional water allocation plans, based on the local hydrogeology.
Fortune Agribusiness says the 40 gigalitre allocation amount represents 0.03% of the 138,000GL stored in the underlying aquifers, and added that some scientific assessments showed that recharge rates have increased over the past 50 years due to more intense rainfall events.
Vogwill disputes the recharge claims, and says even a small drawdown could have deleterious effects. He adds that the total volume of water in the aquifer, which is hundreds of metres deep in parts, is less relevant than any change to the availability of water near the surface, saying: “it’s only that very small part at the top of the aquifer that’s connected to the environment”.
“Even a small change of less than 1% of storage in the entire aquifer could result in large, broad-scale environmental impacts to vegetation, to wetlands and other features, and that has a lot of impacts on their dependent cultural values as well,” he says.
Maureen Jipiyiliya Nampijinpa O’Keefe, with Valerie and Jennifer Nelson, members of her family, at the entrance to Singleton Station
Vogwill says the Singleton Station proposal is “not sustainable”.
“It’s mining groundwater, it’s managed depletion,” he says. “The only question is over what area will these declines occur and what are the implications for things like groundwater-dependent aspects of the environment?”
In a statement, Fortune Agribusiness says there have been “extensive scientific studies” by both themselves and the NT government, “drawing on regionally informed and project-specific hydrology expertise, which directly contradicts this view”.
“The 40GL annual water allocation for Singleton Farm is less than half of the NT Government’s estimated sustainable yield,” they say, adding the estimate is “informed by scientific understanding of the region’s water resources, underpinned by monitoring, assessments, and modelling”.
In response to concerns about uncertainty in groundwater monitoring, the company says the NT government, Geoscience Australia and other institutions have undertaken “extensive scientific studies of both groundwater and vegetation” in recent years which is “steadily enhancing the scientific understanding of the region and reducing uncertainties”. It adds that the staging of the water licence “provides for future adjustments should the farm monitoring indicate they are necessary”.
Concerns about potential cumulative impacts of salinity, aquifer drawdown and climate variability will be addressed in the EIS, the company says.
The legal battle
CEO of Fortune Agribusiness, Peter Wood, at a community meeting at the Barkly Business Hub in Tennant Creek
Traditional owners have been fighting the Singleton Station proposal for more than five years. The Mpwerempwer Aboriginal Corporation (MAC), which represents affected native title holders, sought a ministerial review of the water licence in 2021. The licence was upheld, and in 2022 the MAC and the Arid Lands Environment Centre separately sought a judicial review of that ministerial decision on the grounds that the minister had failed to consider Aboriginal cultural values. It lost that case, then applied to the NT court of appeal and, in May, lost again.
Last Thursday, the CLC, acting on Mpwerempwer Aboriginal Corporation’s behalf, was granted a right to appeal against the case in the high court.
“Finally, someone is listening. I am very happy,” says native title holder Dawn Swan, in a statement released by the CLC. “We have people living on the land and this is their dream to stay here for future generations.
“I am thinking of the old people. They want to know before they pass on that the country is safe, that it is protected.”
A traditional owner of Kaytetye Country, where Singleton Station lies, engages with Peter Wood at a community meeting at the Barkly Business Hub in Tennant Creek
CLC chief executive officer, Les Turner, says native title holders’ decision to pursue the case to the high court shows that water rights are inseparable from land rights and go to the heart of protecting culture.
Singleton Station is held on a pastoral lease by Fortune Agribusiness, but the MAC, on behalf of traditional owners, has rights and responsibilities under the Native Title Act, especially regarding water and sacred sites.
Speaking at a community meeting in Tennant Creek on 6 June, Fortune Agribusiness CEO, Peter Wood, said the company’s water licence had been challenged in the courts “over and over”.
“The courts have reaffirmed our licence each time,” he told the meeting.
Wood told the meeting the project is designed for “sustainable water use” and would create 420 jobs. “What’s critical for us going forward is to continue engagement with the [traditional owners] and also the wider community,” he said.
The NT lands, planning and environment minister Josh Burgoyne says traditional owners were consulted prior to the original water licence being issued with the CLC’s assistance, and that the current groundwater allocation plan for the Western Davenport region “ensures Aboriginal interests are accounted for in all licence decisions, with ongoing Traditional Owner involvement”.
O’Keefe says traditional owners reject the project outright.
“You need some cultural traditional owner that know that country like the back of their hand … and there’s a lot of sacred sites along where you’re going to put that farm,” she says.
The Singleton Station dispute is the latest chapter in a long struggle between economic development and the protection of Australia’s most precious resource. For traditional owners, the fight over the water licence is not just about allocation numbers – it is about survival and cultural continuity.
Peter Corbett, a resident of Ali Curung and traditional owner of the area, draws parallels between this fight and a different dispute over water rights in the Roper River near Katherine.
“The Roper River area, they’re fighting for their rights for that water, but from the river, and its native title over there. They’re fighting – same what we fighting – they’re fighting same,” he says.
“They don’t own everything under the ground, they don’t own anything underground.”