NATURAL RESOURCES COMMITTEE: UPPER SOUTH-EAST DRY LAND SALINITY AND FLOOD MANAGEMENT ACT

The Hon. S.W. KEY (Ashford) (11:18): I move:

That the 47^th report of the committee, entitled Upper South-East Dry Land Salinity and Flood Management Act 2002 Annual Report 2009-10, be noted.

The South-East region of South Australia is a highly modified landscape, and I am sure that the member for Mount Gambier will be able to put a lot more detail into his views on the work we have done on the issue of the Upper South-East Dry Land Salinity and Flood Management Act 2002.

Broadscale land clearing and an extensive drainage network was developed over the past century and it was interesting for me, being basically a city-slicker, to have an opportunity to look at those drains and at what was being proposed, and to hear the different views about the future with regard to the hydrology in the South-East area. I also had the benefit of being on the select committee that looked into the Penola pulp mill proposal, so in addition to what I learnt on the Natural Resources Committee it was also very interesting to spend time talking about that and hearing from expert witnesses, as well as people on the land who knew what they were doing, about the hydrology of that area. I feel as if I have learnt a lot (and indeed there is a lot more to learn) about that area, but certainly the South-East now has a different attraction for me.

The broadacre land clearing and extensive drainage network I mentioned that have developed have converted what was once a wetland dominated landscape into a very high level of agricultural production on a vast scale. Although this has generated great wealth and prosperity for the region and the state, there have been issues raised with regard to the environmental health of that area. Several east-west drains intercept environmental flows, which, in the past, flowed northward to the Upper South-East and the Coorong, a Ramsar-listed wetland of international importance.

There are two main components of the Upper South-East (USE) program. The first issue is draining the saline groundwater and floodwaters away from agricultural areas and, secondly, maintaining essential service flows to wetlands and watercourses.

The USE program of the Department for Water (formerly DWLBC) is completing the construction of a vast interconnected network of surface and groundwater drains, floodways, natural wetlands and watercourses. These are known as USE flows network. The Bald Hill and Winpinmerit drains are the final pieces of infrastructure comprising that network.

The system of drains that reconnect the surface water flows to the wetlands, swamps, watercourses and, ultimately, the Coorong, comprise largely of what is known as REFLOWS (restoring flows to the Upper South-East of South Australia) project. You can understand why it is called REFLOWS.

The REFLOWS project is designed to capture some of the surface water from the Lower South-East that has currently drained to the sea and redirect it along natural historic flow paths to the Upper South-East to supplement environmental flows to the stressed wetlands and watercourses. Once environmental flows are delivered to the existing USE flows network via the REFLOWS project, it should be possible to direct flows throughout the region to optimise water use for environmental purposes.

The system is designed to be flexible so that it can be operated sensitively in response to environmental and agricultural needs. I think members in this house would understand that it took many of us—certainly not people who have been based in country regions—a lot of time to understand the essential issues of the USE and REFLOWS and how they are interconnected, where the drains were and where they should be. As I said, it was quite an educative process for all of us, certainly, needing to understand the complications and the different views that people had in that area.

In July and August 2009, the Upper South-East received above average rainfall. The water was able to be diverted via the Upper South-East Dryland Salinity and Flood Management program into a number of key wetlands, allowing them to be watered for the first time in many years. Furthermore, there was sufficient water to allow some releases into the Coorong South Lagoon via Salt Creek, which I found very interesting. Having camped at Salt Creek, it would be nice to think that there was a bit more water in that creek.

The apparent success of these watering events reflects well on the REFLOWS component and the USE program and bears out the considerable research and planning that has gone into REFLOWS. The committee looks forward to hearing from the department on how the Upper South-East program, and REFLOWS in particular, has functioned, given the trials of the significant rains that we have seen in the region over the past year.

I really look forward particularly to hearing from the expertise on our committee. We are very fortunate to have the member for Mount Gambier, with a considerable track record in his region of work, on our committee. I am sure that he will help us understand what are quite often technical contributions that we receive from the many experts we have on the committee. I commend this report to the house.

Mr WILLIAMS (MacKillop—Deputy Leader of the Opposition) (11:25): Unfortunately, I have to go shortly, so I will not be able to contribute nearly as much as I would like to on this particular matter, but I just want to put a couple of things on the record. I quickly read through the report this morning and I think it is a fine report for what it covers, but unfortunately there is a lot of history and a lot of information that is obviously not in the report.

Page 11 of the report talks about phase 3 of the Upper South-East program under the heading of 'Environmental program' and it talks about there being a budget of $49.3 million, $38.3 million of which has been contributed by the state and commonwealth in equal portions and $11 million raised in the landholder levies. I think it is worth putting on the record that prior to the 2002 program there was an earlier program that is a part of the same Upper South-East drainage project, which had a budget of $24 million. So the total project is $49.3 million plus another $24 million. That $24 million comprised $9 million from each of the state and federal governments and another $6 million levied from the local landholders. The landholders have contributed some $17 million towards drainage of the Upper South-East, which is quite a considerable contribution.

Interestingly, there is a table in the document about some aspects of the project and the chair of the committee has just told us about the Bald Hill and the Wimpinmerit drains that have been completed in recent times (last year). On page 9 of the report there is a table—it is obviously a much earlier table—and it has the drain and the estimated completion date as 22 October 2003, and the completion date estimated then for both of those drains was October 2004, so they were about six years late in being delivered.

I raise these points because these landholders in those two areas, the Wimpinmerit and the Bald Hill valleys, have been contributing those levies. In the case of individuals, we are talking about hundreds of thousands of dollars towards the project, and some of those landholders have had to wait well in excess of 10 years to see the drain run past their property, which has caused quite a bit of anxiety to the landholders themselves.

There has been a lot of to-ing and fro-ing and arguing about the merits of the scheme itself, and also the design of the individual drains. Some argued that we should have had deep drains, some argued that we should have had shallow drains, some argued that the drains should have been on the western side of the valley, some on the eastern side of the valley. At the end of the day, throughout the whole of the scheme, we have a little bit of everything. We have some deep drains, we have some shallow drains, we have drains on one side of the valley, we have drains on the other side of the valley.

Recently, as the member has just told us, we have had superimposed on this the REFLOWS project, a program which I think is fantastic. There is an opportunity for us to manage to return a lot of the water from the Lower South-East, the Mid South-East and the Upper South-East back towards the Coorong to reinvigorate at least the southern basin of the Coorong, which has turned into a hypersaline environment—much to the distress of the locals and the local Aboriginal community, who tell me that they used to be able to almost drink the water at the southern end of the Coorong in the winter seasons and it is currently, I think, two or three times as salty as seawater.

I think the key to successfully cleaning up the environment in the southern basin of the Coorong is in the REFLOWS project and the Upper South-East project per se, but there are needs for other projects as well. I know government agencies are looking at another drain coming from further south, probably south of Kingston, and bringing water to the north, closer to the coast, and eventually getting it into the Coorong; again, another project which I would commend. As I often say, and as I have said a number of times in this house, there are two things we have done in the South-East since white settlement. George Goyder commented in 1864 that, in his opinion, half the land between Salt Creek and the Victorian border became inundated to between one and six feet deep every winter, and that is a lot of water. The two things we have done in the interim is we have cleared most of the vegetation and we have dug drains and run all that water to the sea.

I also argue that the drainage system in the Lower South-East, which was constructed between the late 1860s and the early 1970s, should have more work done on it. That work should be comprised of putting weirs and structures throughout the system, as we have done in the Upper South-East scheme, so that we can actually control the flow of water. Even in recent years when we have had very low rainfall, we have had those drains still delivering groundwater to the sea when there was a dearth of water in the landscape, and that is a great pity. It needs some money—not huge money, but probably in the order of $20 to $30 million maybe over a few years—to put a series of weirs in that drainage system.

The NRM committee may well take that on as a reference and have a look at that and come up with some ideas and a plan to go forward. The committee should go back and look at the original drainage scheme in the Lower South-East and see what can be done to enhance that and to enhance the landscape and the environment of the Lower South-East. I think that would be a terrific project. We also need to make sure that management plans for the wetlands that have been re-wet through the REFLOWS project in particular, but the Upper South-East scheme in general, have good management plans for the operation of flows in and out of them, and are also ticked off by the landowners.

Back in January, I was on a property in the Upper South-East where the farmer has a part of one of these wetlands on one edge of his farm. He has complained for the last two winters that the water levels in that wetland have been put to such a height that it has flooded a fair bit of his farming land, and he has claimed that it has caused him significant losses of pasture. I have seen a series of photos that he has taken and, from the photographic evidence that he has shown to me, I can only agree that the management of that particular wetland was a little overenthusiastic, to say the least. He also tells me that, as soon as the water stops flowing, the wetland dries out because it does not have a sealed bottom in it; it has a rocky bottom. I cannot believe that it was ever a permanent wetland, if that is the case. That is what he has told me and I take him on his word for that.

Right across the South-East, and indeed across the whole state, we have enjoyed an incredibly wet period at least over the last six months. On my farm at Mount Burr, I have probably only experienced one summer anywhere near like what we have experienced this year where the paddocks are still green. There is green feed over the whole of my farm.

An honourable member: God's country.

Mr WILLIAMS: God's country, indeed. If we have even an average winter rainfall, or indeed if we have a wetter than average winter, a lot of surface water is going to be generated in the South-East. The ground and the subsoil is already wet. There is a huge amount of subsoil moisture and we will generate a lot of surface water. I would estimate, if we do have a relatively wet winter, that the drains will be more full than what they have probably been for 10 or 15 years at least, and probably a little bit longer.

That augurs well, again, for the Coorong. There is opportunity now to divert significant amounts of water to the north and into the Coorong, but we could also experience local flooding throughout the South-East. The risk of that occurring is much higher than what it has been.

Having put those matters on the record, I do urge the NRM committee to consider taking up another reference into the drainage system in the South-East, particularly the original part of the system, and having a look at whether we can enhance the local environment by having a program to put a series of weirs in that system.

The Hon. S.W. KEY (Ashford) (11:34): I want to thank particularly the member for MacKillop for his contribution. As I said earlier, we really do encourage local members in particular, or members who have expertise in different areas under the natural resource banner, to contribute to our committee, and I want to acknowledge that. I thank all of our members—past members as well as our current members—for their contribution.

Motion carried.