Two state governments have drastically underdelivered more than $160m in infrastructure measures to improve river health in the northern Murray-Darling basin eight years since they were promised, a major independent review has found.<\/p>\n
This includes failure by the New South Wales government to secure any of the private land access needed to improve water flows over floodplains in the state\u2019s Gwydir region, where scientists had to scramble to rescue turtles<\/a> in dried up wetlands last week.<\/p>\n A separate NSW government project to install passages to help fish migrate<\/a> around barriers in waterways has delivered just 64km (3%) of the original 2,135km target, with the target later reduced to 589km.<\/p>\n Sign up for the Breaking News Australia email<\/a><\/p>\n In Queensland, promised refurbishments and upgrades to weirs also never proceeded past the feasibility stage, the review by the federal inspector general of water compliance, Troy Grant, found.<\/p>\n Grant\u2019s report, published on Wednesday<\/a>, found the NSW and Queensland governments had \u201cseverely underdelivered\u201d on promised infrastructure and engineering measures under a program known as the \u201cNorthern Basin Toolkit\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cQuite simply the environment is the loser along with the taxpayer,\u201d Grant told Guardian Australia.<\/p>\n The toolkit was agreed to by the NSW, Queensland and federal governments to deliver actions that would improve river health without adding extra water.<\/p>\n The program was intended to compensate for a 2018 federal decision to reduce the amount of environmental water for the region from 390bn litres a year to 320bn litres. Environmental flows refer to water released by the government from dams and tributaries into rivers and ecosystems to restore their health.<\/p>\n Governments agreed to deliver infrastructure and policy measures to enable water to flow into wetlands more easily, increase fish populations and to protect environmental water from pumping as it moved downriver.<\/p>\n The federal government committed $166m over the program\u2019s life, with a deadline for completion of the projects of the end of this year.<\/p>\n \u201cThe failure of the Northern Basin Toolkit program raises the question of how can Australians really trust their governments to deliver their promises to look after the rivers,\u201d said Prof Jamie Pittock from the Australian National University and chair of the Wentworth Group of Concerned Scientists.<\/p>\n \u201cThe failure to implement what was promised means that turtles, fish and wetlands die.\u201d<\/p>\n Grant said the NSW government\u2019s delivery of only a small fraction of promised fishways was \u201cabysmal\u201d.<\/p>\n He said another proposal to build a piece of infrastructure that would direct water to the Macquarie Marshes area had not advanced beyond some rocks put in place to stabilise the riverbed in preparation for additional water flow.<\/p>\n