THE social and economic impact of water cuts in the Murray-Darling river system will go back under the microscope. The Murray-Darling Basin Authority has announced it will undertake a fresh analysis of the effects of its proposed cuts on local communities.
In a move designed to assuage irrigators, the authority's chairman, Mike Taylor, said yesterday that the agency would commission a new ''expanded, detailed'' study into the likely impacts of the proposed reductions in water allocations for farmers.
''Over the last few days we've heard loud and clear the call by regional communities across the basin for further, updated research into the local community effects of the proposed basin plan,'' he said.
The move came as the Environment and Water Minister, Tony Burke, said he would not sign a final basin plan without the cross-party political support needed to ensure it was not overturned by Parliament.
Mr Burke said he could understand the anger among communities about the proposals to cut the amount of water which could be taken from the river system. But much of it had been generated by misinformation.
''I can understand why there is anger, given that people think that this report is government policy. It's not,'' Mr Burke told ABC TV's Insiders program.
''They think the numbers [on the size of the water cuts] are locked in. They're not. People think that the government would compulsorily acquire their water. We wouldn't.''
In a preliminary report released earlier this month the authority proposed cuts in the amount of water which could be taken from the rivers of between 27 and 37 per cent across the basin. Under the Water Act, the federal authority is charged with placing new limits on water extraction to help restore the environmental health of the Murray-Darling and put its management on a sustainable footing.
There has been a backlash against the scale of the cuts, and authority officials were confronted by angry farmers and residents at community consultation meetings last week.
Farm organisations argue that the authority's proposals would put many irrigators out of business, cut jobs in river towns and push up food prices.
Mr Taylor said the authority would ''update and broaden'' its evidence on the impact of the cuts in response to the concerns.
The new study, to be completed by March, would consider ''the range of likely negative and positive human, social, financial and economic implications of the proposed basin plan within the basin's 19 regions.'' Issues to be examined would include:
- Direct effects on agriculture and other industries;
- Indirect or flow-on effects on industries, business and community activities;
- The human impacts of the proposals, including on mental health, and;
- Wider social and cultural implications.
The cuts proposed in the preliminary report have already been partly delivered in several Murray-Darling river valleys through the government's buyback of water extraction entitlements from irrigators.
But the National Farmers Federation president, David Crombie, said the cuts to irrigators' water allocations were likely be larger than the authority's headline numbers after state governments deducted allocations for needs such as town water.
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