For us, Protecting Our Water means ensuring that the (future) urban water reserve is protected for use by and for urban purposes.  The urban water reserve should not be used for irrigation via Emu Swamp Dam.

The urban water reserve is 1,500ML and is reserved under the current water plan for future urban use.  This means that it is available to be released in the future as urban needs change, e.g. through population growth or if changes are needed to the amount of water to be captured and stored to deal with changing rainfall patterns.  The important element here is that this is an urban water reserve.  Under the water plan it is not able to be allocated for irrigation purposes.

In its Detailed Business Case (“DBC”), GBIP has proposed that to accumulate the necessary water allocations to operate the dam (3,900ML) it would ask for 1,350ML of the urban water reserve to be converted to a strategic infrastructure reserve to be used for the dam.  This would leave only 150ML remaining in the urban water reserve.  In fact Council has already been granted a further 250ML to supplement its Storm King Dam allocation due to the proposed transfer of 450ML to Emu Swamp Dam (see page 11 here).  

As to the remaining urban water reserve, recently the State government has stated that it is considering a temporary lease of 750ML of the urban water reserve to GBIP.  We at POW! say no to any allocation, whether temporary or permanent, of urban water reserves for irrigation purposes.

There is no need for Emu Swamp Dam to use our urban water reserve.  There are plenty of irrigation allocations in the catchment that could be used to make up the additional 1,710ML that GBIP needs for Emu Swamp Dam.  For perspective, the DBC states (page 37) that “Approximately 3,500 on-farm storages have been constructed to store water for irrigation use.  Water diversion by producers is estimated at 20,700 ML annually.” 

That means Emu Swamp Dam would only need around 8% of the district’s existing irrigation licences to make up the balance needed for Emu Swamp Dam. 

While the community still doesn’t know who the irrigators are, we presume they must be substantial farming operations in the district and we assume that they hold their own significant irrigation licences. 

If the purpose of the dam is to improve water security for irrigation, then why don’t the irrigators transfer a small portion of their own licences to Emu Swamp Dam?

The reference to a “temporary lease” of the urban water reserve is perplexing, as legally there is no power under the Water Act 2000 for the State government to lease urban water reserves.  A portion of the urban water reserve would in fact need to be reclassified as strategic infrastructure reserve prior to any lease, and we would have no assurance that this would ever return to the urban water reserve.

GBIP states (in the DBC, in local media and on its website) that the dam will result in 700 full-time equivalent jobs in the area, this is a significant projected increase in Stanthorpe’s population (5,406 in the 2016 census).  Given the unemployment rate in the area is low (4% in June 2020 according to the SDRC website) then most of these employees (some perhaps with families) would be people moving to the area.  If correct this would mean SDRC could well need more of the urban water reserve to deal with the projected population increase just from the dam itself.

So we say “protect our urban water reserve”!