GREEN groups and East Gippsland Independent MP Craig Ingram have called on the Federal Government to take over management of the Snowy River's revival.
The call follows revelations last Wednesday in The Weekly Times that the NSW Government withheld 40,000 megalitres recovered from a $29 million Murrumbidgee water-saving project, earmarked to boost the Snowy and Murray rivers' environmental flows.
Mr Ingram said the NSW Government could not be trusted and called for the Commonwealth Environmental Water Holder to take over management of the Snowy Entitlement Register.
"Someone needs to hold the environmental allocation who is not compromised," he said.
Australian Conservation Foundation healthy rivers campaigner Arlene Buchan backed Mr Ingram's call, arguing it would deliver far more transparency to the 2002 intergovernmental agreement to revive the Snowy River.
Dr Buchan said the Australian public had been told the "Snowy River had been saved", yet had been given little detail on the $425 million investment in delivering 212,000 megalitres of water entitlements to the Snowy and another 70,000 megalitres to the Murray by 2012.
Snowy River Alliance chairman John Gallard said the lobby group had been asking the NSW Government for copies of the register since 2007.
Mr Gallard said he attended a meeting of the Snowy Community Advisory Group at the Cooma Shire offices on July 22 where NSW Water Minister Phillip Costa promised to make the register and other water accounts available to the public.
The Weekly Times also revealed last week that under the 2002 Snowy deal, Australia's largest hydro power corporation had pocketed 96,787 megalitres earmarked by three governments to boost the Murray River's environmental flow.
Under the deal, the Snowy Hydro Corporation retains the power to release allocations made against water entitlements recovered for the Murray River whenever it chooses.
Since 2005, Snowy Hydro has only released 38,000 megalitres of the 96,787 megalitres it held in the River Murray Increased Flows account. Snowy Hydro makes more out of locking water held in storage into hedging contracts with coal and gas-fired power companies, than from releasing it to generate electricity.
Neither the NSW, Victorian or Federal water ministers responded to requests by The Weekly Times for comment on the issue of transferring control of the Snowy register to the Commonwealth Environmental Water Holder.
