Fury free-flowing at bore project’s closure
FARMERS are furious about the State and federal governments’ decision to discontinue funding for the Cap and Pipe Bore Program.
Funding for the 15-year-old project, hailed the most beneficial ever provided to Australian agriculture, dries up in June and farmers say the fact the future of the Great Artesian Basin (GAB) rehabilitation work is not secure is “totally, completely insane”.
Across three phases of joint Australian and NSW government funding totalling close to $90 million, plus the equivalent contributed by farmers, 398 free-flowing bores have been controlled in NSW with more than 10,000 kilometres of bore drains removed and 18,000km of pipe installed.
That adds up to a saving of 78,500 megalitres of water every year, according to NSW Office of Water figures, and about 4.2m hectares of country supplied with permanent, reliable, efficient and strategically located watering points.
Before the capping and piping, up to 95 per cent of artesian water was being wasted through evaporation and seepage in free-flowing drains since commercial exploitation of the basin’s water and pressure resources began in 1878.
There are still as many as 240 free-flowing bores in NSW to be capped and piped, or about a third of the GAB in NSW.
Nationwide, there are still about 650 to be done.
The GAB is the largest underground freshwater resource in the world and lies below 12 per cent of NSW.
Agriculture groups want $100m invested immediately to see the GAB project to fruition, plus low interest rates to help farmers fund their side.
Many farmers would need to cough up several hundred thousand dollars for their share of reticulation systems (which has ranged from 20pc of the cost of capping and 30pc to 60pc of the cost of replacing drains with pipes).
Farming lobby groups say, given current drought conditions, that would be impossible.
President of the NSW Artesian Bore Users Association and GAB Protection Group Anne Kennedy, “Yuma”, Coonamble, said farmers were gobsmacked governments were sending money to overseas water projects while ignoring this single greatest resource Australia has.
“Science is telling us the GAB is recharging at 0.5 to 10 millimetres a year,”Ms Kennedy said.
“It’s a finite resource – the equivalent of Sydney Harbour every year is being wasted, going down uncapped free-flowing drains.
“Not only do we need to see this project through, we need to crank up the rate at which bores are capped and piped to stop this atrocious wastage.”
Farmers who have already capped and piped their artesian bores say they wouldn’t exist today without it.
Wool and lamb producer Ranald Warby, “Barrakee”, Mungindi, is now in the second year of drought with no effective rain since last January and has for some time been entirely dependant on piped groundwater.
He says he would be out of business were it not for the supply of reliable clean water to 36 tanks and troughs the project provided.
“We have the ability to spread stock out to all paddocks and use any available feed,” he said.
Mr Warby said there were bores that had not flowed for many years now flowing again and others that had been capped and piped no longer needed pumps due to the increase in pressure.
“But with the rise in the pressure of the basin, the remaining uncapped bores are flowing at a greater rate which is why the work has to continue and move at speed,” he said.
Farmers say enormous water usage by the mining and coal seam gas industries is putting increased stress on the basin.
The federal government says it is assessing the benefit of further investment in the rehabilitation of the GAB, with the outcome expected before June.
NSW Minister for Primary Industries Katrina Hodgkinson said her government considered the rehabilitation works to be a vital initiative for landholders in the basin and was continuing its negotiations with the Commonwealth to extend funding beyond June 30, 2014.
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