Mr BAYLEY - I want to start by welcoming you. Thank you for coming in. I just declare that I have a brother who is a farm irrigator so obviously a customer.
Mr KNEEBONE - Yes, Anthony - I know him well.
Mr BAYLEY - Yes. I have no financial interest in his business but I obviously have an interest. In saying that, I would like to ask the chairman about your environment monitoring. The website says that all surveys continue to show minimal impact form Tasmanian Irrigation activities. Just working through this statement a little bit, I would like to clarify some things. When you say all surveys, can you provide a list of the types of surveys you're talking about? Obviously water quality is one of those, but can you give us a list of the things you are monitoring in that regard?
Ms VINOT - Thank you very much for the question. In all of our schemes, on each of the farms we have a farm water access plan that specifies where the water is applied and other measures that need to be taken to make sure that whatever impacts there are from irrigating are contained to the irrigation area and not extended out to other areas inappropriately. That's the first port of call.
Mr BAYLEY - That's on the farms?
Ms VINOT - On the farms themselves. The first measure to try to protect the environment and ensure there is no impact is through those. Secondly, we do water quality monitoring and I will ask Andrew to provide some more detail about the water quality monitoring program which is quite comprehensive, but it's part of a broader program that's done at a state level. You probably understand that we're responsible for some of the irrigation schemes that are applied in the state but we don't manage all of the irrigation and some of them are private and some are managed by other trusts. We do a fair amount of monitoring around the schemes we are operating but that information is then combined as well to look at the broader environmental impacts and impacts not only on water quality but also on biota.
Mr BAYLEY - Against what are you comparing the data that is coming through that monitoring? What thresholds? And have you got baseline data going back numerous years that you're comparing that against? Could you just talk us through the process there a little bit?
Mr KNEEBONE - Overall, we have 124 sites over 20 schemes that we monitor for water quality and these are established monitoring regimes that include reference and downstream sites so that you have a comparison. They're established at the point of the scheme being justified and are essentially state-based schemes for ensuring that we can determine, or if we can determine, if the irrigation is having an effect on river health and water quality. It's not only chemical indicators but it's nutrients. There are also some of our schemes where we do the AUSRIVAS macro-invertebrate studies as well. I think they're generally more associated with EPBC approvals.
Mr BAYLEY - What threshold are you comparing them against, or what baseline?
Mr KNEEBONE - We're given a series of a 20th percentile and an 80th percentile of what would be considered a standard for that particular river, and we report against whether or not there's an exceedance above or below those 80th and 20th percentiles.
Mr BAYLEY - And between that, you consider it a minimal impact, according to your website.
Mr KNEEBONE - Well, it's not even a minimal impact, because with percentiles work you're always going to exceed them. It also depends on the time of year as to whether the water is relatively warmer or colder, et cetera, so it's not good/bad. It's trend data that is then provided through to the portal for NRE and is reported then publicly through that process. All we can tell from that is whether or not the trends over time of those things are going to work, remembering they're point samples at a point in time; they're not trend data, but it is the monitoring regimen that we're required to comply with.
On top of that, we also do biodiversity management where we're required to. We have a number of schemes where we're monitoring for threatened and rare species, whether they're aquatic or on the ground. For instance, we have to do quoll surveys around the Meander Dam and that was part of the EPBC approvals. Then of course on top of that we've got to provide our compliance against our water licences and our metered takes.
Mr BAYLEY - Irrigation activities are not just storage and extraction, but also its application on the land? How do you define that?
Mr KNEEBONE - The environmental monitoring is about monitoring the broader catchment all the way through the irrigation district to see whether there's movement, but there's a lot of different sources into that, of which irrigation would be one, so it's very hard to say that there's a correlation between any results and irrigation in that respect, but in respect of the application of water to land and the management of nutrient runoff from land and impact on soil health and protected species on people's land, then that's the Farm Water Access Plan. That's a regimen that's been put in place across all of our schemes. It's a requirement to have one in order to take water, and a selection of those is audited every year.
Mr BAYLEY - We'll come back to that, thank you.
Mr KNEEBONE - Sorry, if I can just be very clear on that - for the schemes that we have built. We inherited some schemes and not every scheme or irrigator is required to have a Farm Water Access Plan - just the 16 we've built.
Mr BAYLEY - To continue the water testing line of questioning, your annual report says:
Some results were outside of normal ranges across all schemes throughout the year. However, there were no obvious correlations with the supply of Tasmanian Irrigation water with the results.
You touched on some of the ranges there, but can you detail the analysis that you employ to be able to make this claim that there's no obvious correlation with the supply of Tas Irrigation water with the results? It's a curious set of words, 'no obvious correlations'.
Mr KNEEBONE - It's because you cannot be black and white in this. The issue with this catchment scale is that you've got so many inputs. There could be forestry, there could be other irrigation happening in the same district. We're taking point source samples from a reference sample and then something that's further down, whether it's the water temperature, dissolved oxygen, chemical, fertiliser, et cetera. In terms of the data we have in front of us at the time, our environmental people look at that and say, 'there's no adverse trends', or 'there's nothing we can see that says that the application of irrigation water is making any great impact'.
Mr BAYLEY - Yet you can make definitive statements around no minimal impact.
Mr KNEEBONE - I think it's a qualified statement. I don't think it is definitive.
Mr BAYLEY - 'All surveys continue to show minimal impact from Tasmanian Irrigation activities', is the quote that I have here. In that relation, the annual report shows that some results were outside of normal ranges. Can you detail how many and in which areas were outside of normal ranges?
Mr KNEEBONE - I couldn't give you that detail.
Mr BAYLEY - Can you take that on notice?
Ms PALMER - I am happy to take that on notice. Is there any opportunity of getting that information before the end of the session, or would it need a bit more?
Mr KNEEBONE - There's 10 000 data points.
Ms PALMER - Okay. We're going to take that on notice. Two hours just isn't long enough.
Mr BAYLEY - To continue the theme on monitoring, 41 per cent of Tasmania's agricultural land is serviced by TI. We know that many of those areas are stressed. The environmental conditions are stressed, and the river health is stressed. You say yourself that every scheme area is seeing abnormal water quality testing results. I think a couple of years ago when you were here you acknowledged that TI wasn't doing trend monitoring. I think other departments were but not necessarily TI. Have you stepped into that space at all?
Mr KNEEBONE - No we haven't. We comply with the requirements of the department when we have there - but no we are not doing that. We are working with the department on the river water use strategy and in particular the - I can't remember; there's a working group that's part of that which is around data monitoring and reporting. We are part of a working group that is working with the department about how that gets rationalised and improved, and how we make the water monitoring and publicly available data more user friendly.
Mr BAYLEY - Right, so when you are making those sort of claims around the impact of irrigation or absence of, it is based on the data that is being held and analyzed elsewhere not TI itself. When it comes to, how many natural water ways do you use for transfer of water?
Mr KNEEBONE - For transfer of water? We use the Great Forester, the South Esk, and the Macquarie and the Coal.
Mr BAYLEY - Do you know off the top of your head the volume of water that goes down there?
Mr KNEEBONE - Not off the top of my head.
Mr BAYLEY - I am interested in this because presumably it is done in batches, is it like there is a pulse, releases in a pulse? The concern about - and we talked to you a couple of years ago about the issue of this in relation to the release of sediments and toxins and so forth. When water is released in a pulse from those dams it can have a significant impact downstream.
Mr KNEEBONE - Where we have river deliveries, then they are done on the basis of an order but they are not large slugs. There would be a continuous delivery over a period of time. So it is in terms of megalitres per day. Then the irrigators themselves have to extract that at the point - they have to allow for a delivery time. Then they extract what they are supposed to less any losses. So we would have a consolidation of a number of orders, for instance with South Esk, we harvest during the winter time and we release during the summer and then its just released on a continuous basis.
Mr BAYLEY - Are you testing that harvested water when you release it? On release? For quality? The reason we are asking here is because there can be a significant build up of nutrients and run off from agricultural facilities going into those storage areas that then gets released on mass when that water is released down a natural waterway.
Mr KNEEBONE - In general terms, our dams that we harvest into are not catchment dams, they have very limited of their own catchments, because they're effectively what's known as turkey's nest dams. I believe there is water monitoring, I'd have to take this question on notice, I'm not exactly sure as to the monitoring regime of our own dams. I'd have to take that on notice.
Mr BAYLEY - When you say 'continuous delivery', how long can one continuous delivery episode go for? Is that constant or is it in batches? How long would that be for?
Mr KNEEBONE - It depends on the volumes that the collective irrigators are asking for. In general terms, it is a fairly consistent amount across a season, because in order to get their full allocation they have to take a consistent delivery and get all of their water, they've got to take a consistent all the time in order to get the volume of the water that they need in a season.
Mr BAYLEY - Through you, minister: The annual report identifies a number of non-compliances with those Farm Access Plans. I acknowledge they do seem to be pretty minor; they're normally irrigating outside of the boundary of the grid area, or irrigating on soils that are not approved for that activity. Given that, are you undertaking any activities to educate farmers on their responsibilities under that Farm Water Access Plan?
Mr KNEEBONE - Thank you for the question. The short answer to your question is yes. A year or two ago, we identified that those levels of non-compliance, although minor, were sort of creeping up, so we decided we needed to do more. They were administrative issues that were being overlooked for the maintenance of the Farm Water Access Plans.
So, we've now looking at and have developed this year an education program that goes out before we go and do those audits. It's more of a proactive call to work with irrigators about, 'hey, have you updated your Farm Water Access Plan? Have you moved where your pivots are going to go? Have you got a new dam on your property?' Asking those sorts of questions, because we're really aiming to try and make this Farm Water Access Plan the process that delineates TI from the rest of the irrigation world. I have not seen this sort of approach taken previously to ensure sustainability and the use and application of irrigation water-
Mr BAYLEY - You're holding it up as a significant mechanism in terms of -
Mr KNEEBONE - Yes, and remembering it's only applied to 10 per cent, so the water that we supply is only about 10 per cent of the irrigation water in the state.
Mr BAYLEY - How many audits did you do in the last year? Do you have that on hand?
Mr KNEEBONE - Forty-seven.
Mr BAYLEY - The annual report details only minor cases. There were no major breaches that you're aware of?
Mr KNEEBONE - No major breaches. I think we've only ever had one or two over the years that have got beyond the minor breach level, and they were very quickly rectified.
Mr BAYLEY - In terms of groundwater quality testing, the annual report, page 29, shows that 82 per cent of required groundwater quality tests were conducted. Do you know why almost 20 per cent were not conducted?
Mr KNEEBONE - I'd have to take that on notice. Generally, it would either be access to the bore or there was not sufficient water able to be gained out of that particular bore. There will be reasons why. It won't just be that we didn’t want to do it.
Mr BAYLEY - Is that statistic pretty consistent across the year?
Mr KNEEBONE - I believe it is. We only do groundwater monitoring in the south east of the state. It's part of the EPBC approval for the south east stage 3 scheme, particularly because of the wetlands issues.
Mr BAYLEY - On EPBC -
Ms PALMER - Sorry, just before you do, Mr Behrakis, can I check, Mr Bayley, are you satisfied with the answer to that question or is there more information you would like?
Mr BAYLEY - No, I think that's fine, thank you.
