Ms BADGER (Lyons) – Honourable Speaker, I rise this evening to raise concerns from the community in the Derwent Valley. There has recently been a water license variation application from Mr Jenkins of Jenkins Hire to take an additional 500 megalitres, bringing his total licence to 799 megalitres from 299 megalitres. This application is currently under assessment. This is a community who have faced a series of issues relating to terrible odour, river pollution and more. They are deeply concerned why there is a need to take additional water and, most pressingly, what it will be used for.
We only need to cast our minds back to 2020, when the proponents of the water licence variation caused two major environmental incidents on the Plenty River. Eleven breaches under the Environmental Management and Pollution Act 1994 resulting in a major fish death of over 100,000 brown trout, 12,000 rainbow trout, 43 brook trout, and 23 display fish at the nearby salmon ponds.
Since that fish kill, the EPA has issued two more breach notices. In 2022, for the stockpile of liquid controlled waste and biomass that were not correctly widowed, resulting in 19 odour complaints, some from 1.5 kilometres away. The other notice issued was to stop land spreading organic waste on areas that slope towards the Plenty River. The volume of 500 megalitres has been requested from the River Derwent, where 98.6 per cent of the surety five water availability limit has already been allocated.
The Tasmanian Water Assessment Tool indicates that only 3070 megalitres is potentially still available. That 500 megalitres, for an unknown use, is a significant portion of what’s left, should it be approved. I say the water is for an unknown use because the water allocation is listed broadly for ‘irrigation’. According to the department, it has been intended to fill a so far unapproved, unpermitted dam that may or may not already exist, and the concerns from the community are extremely valid over the risk of what a future dam with this amount of water may be used for considering both devastating 2020 events which came from uncontrolled spills in makeshift dams holding hazardous waste.
Perhaps the water is for the previously proposed and then withdrawn feed lot. Proposed intensive farming – is the water to grow silage on site for the feed lot? The community do not know and, fairly, they don’t have confidence in the current land management for this case, given the past devastation that’s been caused. It should really be on the proponent to exercise transparency and open communication with the community if he is to regrow trust, and for the people who live nearby to have confidence in any new propositions, because while these actions are happening on one person’s land, the serious and negative implications are for the whole community.
When considering past events, ongoing odour issues, limited water allocation remaining and the lack of river monitoring in the Derwent and, indeed, across the entire state, here we have the best ‘worst case’ example of why we desperately need to establish statutory water management plans overseen by water catchment authorities right across Tasmania. In other parts of Australia, water catchment authorities are already the norm, established for the sole purpose of protecting and managing rivers. Victoria has ten catchment management authorities, and Queensland, South Australia and Western Australia all have regional bodies dedicated to river health.
Tasmania is an outlier, and nowhere would the case for action be stronger than on the Derwent. Last term, the Greens tabled a petition on behalf of Safe Water Hobart, who I acknowledge are here with us today, to set up a Derwent water catchment authority and the government has fallen short. Even funding for the Rural Water Use Strategy stops after this year in the forward Estimates in the draft budget before us.
The State of the Environment Report 2024 was clear in recommendation 14: Tasmania needs investment into monitoring our river’s health. We should have an annual State of the Water report, and the commission recommended, as a priority, that Tasmania work towards broader water resource policy approach that addresses resource allocation, water security and quality.
Statutory water management plans coordinated by water catchment authorities that oversee the catchment to the coast can assist on all fronts. Water is literally our life source and in the climate crisis, properly funded programs will be the crucial lifelines for many communities. We must see governments of all levels come to the table for water security, quality and management as a matter of urgency.
