Moved from Sydney to Tamworth 4 years ago. When we moved up Chaffey Dam was full & the town was on the normal permanent restrictions, which in the main is no use of sprinklers in the heat of the day (residential or commercial). Within a couple of months the restrictions started to crank up through the levels to level 5 and is currently sitting at level 4. Within that period we have had towns around the region with no water at all for citizens to use, so water had to be trucked in. Irrigators got their take of course and I can tell you that cotton farmers are not a popular group around this region. I have seen mention that there are towns that rely on cotton farms and perhaps that is true in a financial sense. When you talk to residents in those towns however, cotton fans are few and far between. It’s hard for someone to see the financial benefit of farms that have levy banks higher than houses full of water, when they turn on a tap to get a glass of water for their kids and nothing comes out.
The worst thing to happen to a dry country like Australia is the formation of a water market. You will never get any agreement regarding water use in this country now as profit comes before people. Now that water is a fully fledged commodity that companies can invest in means that the financial interests of water will always outweigh community needs. Water will never be free of course as to supply water costs money through treatment, transport, storage, etc. but it should never have been turned into a profit making enterprise.
Cotton farming isn’t the only problem in the system by any means, but it is an easy industry to target when drought affected towns have no water available to them for basic needs or to grow veges to feed their families. Articles such as this https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/jan/31/photos-reveal-queensland-cotton-farms-full-of-water-while-darling-river-runs-dry are also good at getting the fingers pointed at cotton, especially when the industry trumpets it as a “dry land crop”. I’ve had many discussions with people across the region up here (we often travel to different towns) and cotton growers are a sore point, probably because the industry gets so much attention. Arguments that are raised ranged from the basic “You can’t eat cotton so why in a dry country are we wasting water on it” through to the spurious “All the cotton farms are owned by Americans, so it’s the Yanks basically stealing our water”. These aren’t from people against farming either, they just don’t see the value in growing such water intensive crops in a country like Australia (more than a few stated we shouldn’t grow rice or almonds either). A lot of people I spoke to were incensed that ‘normal’ farmers couldn’t access their water allocations for their food crops or stock, but the cotton farmers still got all their water - of course I have no idea whether those statements were true or not, and without checking the individual farm records there is probably no way to check.
As someone who is only a recent mover to the country, I really had no idea how emotive the water situation is - from people in towns through to farmers on the land. The government by no means escapes blame either, they are probably looked on less favorably than cotton farmers lol. The genuine outrage when this story hit the news had people raging for months https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/more-than-six-months-worth-of-tamworth-s-drinking-water-disappears-without-a-trace-20191220-p53lxt.html. Theories about what happened are still circulating and no-one believes Water NSW when they say it was due to transmission losses (evaporation, etc.). Theft by irrigators is blamed, corrupt government officials selling it off is blamed, and of course complete mismanagement of the whole system is blamed with people saying those in charge have no idea where any of the water is going.
My personal view is that fresh water in a dry country is a complex problem with only worse issues to come with a changing climate. I do believe however that it is not something that should be a profit making exercise. The way things are heading it’s a no-brainer that it will get to the stage of people in some areas taking matters into their own hands, and I don’t think anyone wants to see that. People need water for basic household needs including their gardens, farmers need water to feed our country and export, industry needs water to function and the environment needs water to survive. I know some will get their hackles up when the environment is mentioned as they believe that people who care for the environment (environmentalists) are ideological radicals incapable of independent thought and therefore bereft of the ability to see practical solutions, a sweeping generalisation akin to saying all coalition voters are coal burning, fossil fuel worshipping environmental terrorists who care nothing of the planet future generations inherit lol.
The system as it stands is not working, but to get a system that works for all is going to be devilishly difficult as there are too many parties with competing interests. Do we need to go down the road of telling farmers what they can and can’t grow? Who should be in charge of deciding where the water goes and how much each interested party gets to use? Should water trading be banned or do we restrict it only to parties directly linked to the water to be traded (i.e. towns, farms, industry) and not investors? Does the control of water need to be handed to a truly independent body comprised of scientists, industry and social representatives to determine who gets what and when?
I can see the sense in the arguments about growing highly water intensive crops on a dry continent, as it does make sense. Who would decide which crops would get banned though, and how would you work out compensation for those farmers affected? Would we only compensate those that had perennial crops such as almonds which are long term land investments, or do we also compensate annual croppers such as cotton growers? Does the compensation only cover the specialised equipment bought for that particular crop, or does it cover the difference in profits between what they grow after the ban to what they grew before? Would the government have to buy farms back from those that didn’t want to farm anything else?
