IT IS a stark reminder of the woes afflicting the southern Murray Darling Basin: contractors finishing off another massive dam enlargement.
A team of bulldozers and scrapers ran at full throttle across a Moree property last week to almost double its on-farm storage capacity to 11,400 megalitres.
The development, in one of the Murray Darling Basin's most stressed catchments, comes as the Federal Government rushes to buy water from other northern NSW and Queensland irrigation properties to revive basin flows.
And it follows yesterday's revelation that August inflows into the Murray Darling Basin were less than a fifth of the long-term average.
Moree irrigator Stephen Seery said he was simply expanding the capacity of his property's existing 250-megalitre dam to 1400 megalitres and scraping out another old 750-megalitre dam to hold 4000 megalitres.
"I'm rebuilding two old dams, increasing their depth to reduce evaporation (losses) so I can meet all these new rules and regulations," Mr Seery said.
Just a fortnight ago The Weekly Times revealed NSW and Queensland had failed to halt the massive growth in the expansion of irrigation dams across the Murray Darling Basin.
The Murray Darling Basin Commission's Independent Audit Group estimates Queensland and NSW irrigators have increased the capacity of their on-farm storages by at least 1.6 million megalitres since the interstate cap on diversions was signed in 1995.
The expansion has allowed irrigators to boost their ability to divert and harvest floodwaters across the northern basin, with Queensland diverting more water into private dams in the past financial year than ever before, a total of 1.041 million megalitres.
Asked about planning approval for his dams, Mr Seery said: "We haven't had much trouble because they're inside the existing levee wall system."
The dams will bring the total dam capacity on Mr Seery's Clifton property to 11,400 megalitres, after he built a 6000-megalitre dam in 2003-04.
Moree graziers have been incensed by the development, which they said allowed Mr Seery to continue unregulated harvesting of floodwater and transfer water licences that could not be developed in the northern Gwydir system to the Clifton property.
One local grazier, who did not wish to be named, said Mr Seery had been allowed to transfer licences 60km from the Gil Gil Creek, which is already grossly over-allocated, to the Clifton property.
He will use the licence to tap into the unregulated Tycannah Creek, next to the Clifton property.
"How could they allow him to do that when the whole valley is over-allocated?" the grazier asked.
The development appears to fly in the face of NSW's commitments to halt floodplain developments and cap diversions at 1994 levels.
Despite these commitments, the NSW Government managed to introduce its Floodplain Harvesting Policy only in July.
Floodplain harvesting entails building diversion banks and channels to harvest floodwater that spills across the floodplains of NSW and Queensland to store in large dams.
In many cases, the diversion channels act as massive storages in their own right.
Until July, floodplain diversions were unregulated by the NSW Government and are yet to be metered.
Inland Rivers Network co-ordinator Amy Hankinson said the new policy was flawed, as it might grandfather existing diversion works built since 1995 that eroded the MDB cap.
A spokeswoman for the NSW Department of Water and Energy said the new floodplain policy would require metering at the dams and accounting of floodplain harvesting.
Yet the MDBC told The Weekly Times only six large irrigation dams were being metered in the northern basin.
Mr Seery said he was only metering his water use at the creek and had no plans to install meters on the dams.
The MDBC confirmed last month that NSW neither measured nor monitored floodplain harvesting, despite its policy.
Asked about the Moree development, a spokesman for NSW Water Minister Nathan Rees said it was based on the transfer of existing regulated river licences and that approval had been granted in 2005.
Moree mixed farmer Bryce Woods said Mr Rees was paying lip-service to the Federal Government's bid to control irrigation development in the basin.
"Once the voting public of NSW begins to understand the gifts that Nathan Rees is about to bestow upon certain large floodplain irrigators in the north he will find it very hard to hold office," Mr Woods said.
"What he is doing is to the detriment of all downstream users in the Murray Darling Basin, including more efficient southern irrigators."
The Moree development follows last months's commitment from Prime Minister Kevin Rudd to spend at least $400 million in partnership with the states buying NSW and Queensland irrigation properties.
Victorian Farmers Federation water council chairman Richard Anderson said the continued expansion of dam developments and diversions could erode the Federal purchasing program.
"In the end, you can't blame the irrigator because this development is within the rules," Mr Anderson said. "The problem is the NSW Government has rules that can be exploited."
