{"id":715536,"date":"2026-06-04T21:31:17","date_gmt":"2026-06-04T21:31:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/715536\/"},"modified":"2026-06-04T21:31:17","modified_gmt":"2026-06-04T21:31:17","slug":"farmer-says-flood-plain-harvesting-has-forced-him-to-run-cattle-by-the-roadside","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/715536\/","title":{"rendered":"Farmer says flood plain harvesting has forced him to run cattle by the roadside"},"content":{"rendered":"

Paul Cameron watches his mob of thirsty cattle sink their heads into the Goan waterhole on the outskirts of Trangie in western New South Wales.<\/p>\n

Mr Cameron has driven his cattle to graze the scrubby patches of Crown land hugging the public billabong for more than a year.<\/p>\n

“I’ve been walking the stock to town \u2026 because we haven’t got any water in our own system,” Mr Cameron said.<\/p>\n

\"Cattle<\/p>\n

Paul Cameron’s cattle rely on the public waterhole on the edge of town. (ABC Central West: Lani Oataway)<\/p>\n

But his is not a typical drought story.<\/p>\n

Mr Cameron says water that would normally flow onto his property when it rains is caught in dams on his neighbour’s place under a flood plain harvest licence.<\/p>\n

“All my natural flows are gone and gone forever due to artificial mechanics,” Mr Cameron said.<\/p>\n

“We’ll be potentially in a drought forever more because the government has issued these flood plain harvest licences and legalised it.”\"A<\/p>\n

Paul Cameron says the paddocks once funnelled water into the Trangie Cowal during rain or flooding. (ABC Central West: Lani Oataway)<\/p>\n

Water for courses<\/p>\n

Mr Cameron is a dryland farmer.<\/p>\n

His type of farming relies on rainfall and water moving through the wider river system.<\/p>\n

Irrigators, like Mr Cameron’s cotton-growing neighbour, are different.<\/p>\n

They need higher volumes of water than rain-fed crops, so they store water in dams and channels.<\/p>\n

Most of the water comes from government-built dams but some of it comes from capturing rain or floodwater, known as flood plain harvesting.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

Flood plain harvest licences allow holders to capture and store water that would otherwise flow overland. (Supplied: NSW government)<\/p>\n

It takes water moving overland, headed for natural water systems and has always been opportunistic, according to water policy expert Bill Johnson.<\/p>\n

“Up until 2000, flood plain harvesting wasn’t legal, people were just taking it,” Mr Johnson said.<\/p>\n

“Because it had been allowed to go on like that, it was easier to licence it than it was to enforce it.”<\/p>\n

From 2016, the NSW government began to issue flood plain harvest licences to irrigators who fitted certain criteria across five of the seven water management zones in the northern Murray-Darling Basin.<\/p>\n

NSW Executive director of water planning and knowledge, Mitchell Isaacs now heads the team that oversaw the rollout.<\/p>\n

“In order to be eligible, people had to have either a [dam] that was in place at the time or an approval for a [dam] that was to be able to take flood plain harvesting,” Mr Isaacs said.<\/p>\n

Dubbed the Healthy flood plain Project, some farmers were able to get very old or even unregistered dams rubber-stamped as part of their flood plain harvest licence.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

Capturing water that would otherwise flow overland is the last type of water take to be regulated in NSW. (Supplied: NSW government)<\/p>\n

Some were permitted to dramatically expand their storages.<\/p>\n

Mr Isaacs said the criterion acted as a “cap” on how much water could be taken.<\/p>\n

“If you didn’t have a work or an approval, then it meant you weren’t an existing flood plain harvester and we were trying to prevent any further growth in take.”<\/p>\n

‘Growing like topsy’<\/p>\n

NSW Farmers Association president Xavier Martin said he was dubious about the way the government was processing flood plain harvest licences.<\/p>\n

“Members are reporting to me valley to valley, region to region, there’s a serious lack of transparency in the departmental approach to what they do and how they do it,” Mr Martin said.<\/p>\n

He said the number and size of dams had ballooned under the Healthy Floodplains Project, meaning the amount of rain or overland flow entering the dams had also surged.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

Xavier Martin says the future of agriculture depends on restoring water flow. (ABC New England: Brigitte Murphy)<\/p>\n

“One branch meeting I was at recently, a member was showing me how a quite small 3 megalitre tail water dam that he didn’t have a problem with \u2026 has since been approved as a 3 gigalitre storage,” Mr Martin said.<\/p>\n

“That’s the sort of growing like topsy nonsense that’s been going on.”<\/p>\n

He said flood plain harvesting practices were changing the landscape, drying downstream users out or exposing them to bursting dams during heavy rain.<\/p>\n

“Some people lose their beneficial flows,” he said.<\/p>\n

“They might have been able to run 600 cows [but] because of the flood plain take, they can barely run 200 cows.<\/p>\n

“Others get extreme velocity.<\/p>\n

“And then there’s just a few that are in the Goldilocks zone that actually get the water they want when they want it.”<\/p>\n

\"Two<\/p>\n

Flood plain harvest storages can be so big they require piers. (Supplied: NSW government)<\/p>\n

‘Boots on the ground, eyes in the sky’<\/p>\n

The Natural Resources Access Regulator (NRAR) is the independent body responsible for monitoring how much water licensees are keeping in their storages under flood plain harvesting licences.<\/p>\n

The watchdog relies on a network of satellites and installed meters to catch people taking more water than permitted.<\/p>\n

“They’ve got boots on the ground, eyes in the sky and they are a fair but firm regulator,” Mr Isaacs said.<\/p>\n

But NRAR’s latest compliance figures across the five water management zones paint a patchy picture.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

The Natural Resources Access Regulator posts compliance rates for the northern basin online. (ABC News)<\/p>\n

Two zones \u2014 the Border Rivers and the Gwydir \u2014 have the most storages metered.<\/p>\n

However, Macquarie, where Paul Cameron is, has 67 per cent of storage unmetered.<\/p>\n

Neighbouring Barwon Darling sits at 71 per cent unmetered and the Namoi zone is yet to be inspected.<\/p>\n

Mr Isaacs says this is because irrigators are still grappling with a decade-old system.<\/p>\n

“There will always be some teething issues when you have any new regulatory framework,” he said.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

The government says meters installed on water storages track how much is being captured. (Supplied: NSW Government)<\/p>\n

Bill Johnson says the problem is cultural.<\/p>\n

“In 2017, the New South Wales Ombudsman did its third report on the administration of water in New South Wales,” he said.<\/p>\n

“They observed that there was a cultural impediment within the department to really enforcing the law.”<\/p>\n

Rainwater exempt<\/p>\n

Central to the flood plain harvesting debate is rain.<\/p>\n

Because the NSW Environment Protection Authority prohibits irrigators from discharging water in case it contains pesticides, exemptions are made for any rainfall licensees capture.<\/p>\n

But since flood events only occur every five to 10 years, rain is what is most often going into storages under flood plain harvest licences.<\/p>\n

Mitchell Isaacs said the government had factored that in.<\/p>\n

“We’ve effectively removed that [rain] from the volume we would issue [on] a flood plain harvesting licence.” he said.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

Bill Johnson is a former Murray Darling Basin Authority director and water policy expert. (ABC Central West: Lani Oataway)<\/p>\n

Bill Johnson said this loophole made measuring accurate water harvest impossible.<\/p>\n

“I don’t think anyone knows how much water is being taken with flood plain harvesting,” he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“It’s all mixed up with rainfall run-off, different sources, river pumping and unregulated flows.”<\/p>\n

He says graziers like Paul Cameron will continue to suffer as long as water is seen as for the taking.<\/p>\n

“There’re many stories like Paul’s across the basin,” Mr Johnson said.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

Paul Cameron says the last time his “drought proof” property saw water was in 1994. (ABC Central West: Micaela Hambrett)<\/p>\n

“Governments need to step in and look at the rivers as something that the whole community owns. Not just the people who can take the water.”<\/p>\n

The NSW Irrigators Council and the minister for water declined to be interviewed for this story.<\/p>\n

Mr Cameron’s neighbour also declined, but told the ABC they had always complied with NSW government water policy requirements.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Paul Cameron watches his mob of thirsty cattle sink their heads into the Goan waterhole on the outskirts…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":715537,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[64,63,110955,4358,347211,75,347210,48555,347212,128,204204],"class_list":["post-715536","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-environment","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-cotton","tag-drought","tag-dryland-farming","tag-environment","tag-floodplain-harvesting","tag-irrigation","tag-mdbp","tag-science","tag-water-policy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/715536","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=715536"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/715536\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/715537"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=715536"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=715536"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=715536"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}