Grant said that similarly to equipment used in agriculture, infrastructure used at Toorale to extract water from the rivers and divert it into the national park is “constructed, licensed, operated, and utilised by different bodies at state and federal level, and each of them may well have contributed to the potential illegal take of water or over-extraction of environmental water.”
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He said it was possible that laws and regulations had been broken in the over-extraction of water, the unlicensed extraction of water, the unmetered extraction of water, and in the inappropriate construction of works to take the water.
It was possible that similar errors had been made at other extraction sites across the Murray-Darling Basin, which sprawls over a million square kilometres, he said.
He said did not believe any laws were deliberately broken, but that various bodies over many years operating in a complex system may have made mistakes.
It was a “potential calamity of monumental, multiple, compounding errors.”
Grant said after the complaints were made the Commonwealth Water Holder “acted professionally” by suspending its contribution to NSW environmental water flows. The NSW environmental water holder has also suspended environmental flows.
The Commonwealth Environment Water Holder, Dr Simon Banks, said in a statement that he had “temporarily paused all environmental watering actions in NSW … due to a recent shift in how held environmental water is interpreted under various NSW water-sharing and policy frameworks.”
The NSW environmental water holder took similar action. “Environmental water holders, in an abundance of caution, have suspended delivery of some environmental water in order to ensure they remain within the law,” said a spokesperson for the NSW Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water.
“We have discovered a technical issue in the way the NSW Water Management Act is drafted which we are working to resolve.”
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In a separate statement, the department said the government was taking steps to ensure all water is effectively and transparently accounted for and that not all environmental water delivery has stopped.
“Some events can still be delivered this year as planned where this can be done within the current rules. Rainfall and other water releases from dams also mean water will continue to flow in rivers.
“The impacts of missed environmental water deliveries will vary according to the valley and specific environmental requirements.
“We are working closely with multiple agencies and government partners to address the concerns raised by the Commonwealth Environmental Water Holder and expect paused environmental water deliveries will be progressively reinstated throughout the water year.”
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