AN INTERSTATE war has erupted over front-page claims NSW irrigators are stealing water from the Murray River and South Australian irrigators are missing out.
The bare-knuckle fight is on between the NSW Irrigators Council and the head of South Australian Murray Irrigators, Tim Whetstone over photographs Mr Whetstone took while on tour in South West NSW.
These show a farm water meter, or Dethridge wheel, which had been chocked and was not spinning.
Mr Whetstone took his photos to his local metropolitan tabloid, the Adelaide Advertiser, claiming NSW irrigators were stealing water by illegally tampering with water meters.
He said he’d heard from irrigation chiefs in NSW who allegedly said the practice of chocking meters was considered a “national sport”.
On the back of that story was support from an unlikely political ally, Premier Mike Rann, who last week backed the claims of water theft in another media report.
Mr Whetstone has since described water metering in NSW as “haphazard, inadequate and sometimes non-existent” and called for NSW Irrigators to prove there are no illegal diversions taking place anywhere in NSW before he backs away from his claims.
NSW Irrigators Council chief executive, Andrew Gregson, is furious. He categorically said there was no stealing going on and demanded Mr Whetstone apologise.
There is even a suggestion NSW Irrigators Council is preparing to run full pages ads in Adelaide refuting the claims and attacking Mr Whetstone’s credibility.
Irrigators Council members agreed at last week’s meeting that unless Mr Whetstone took his complaints to the proper authorities and could prove illegal meter tampering, he should retract his comments.
The farmer at the centre of the allegations, Michael Maloney, can’t believe Mr Whetstone made the claims after it was explained to the touring South Australians that the Dethridge wheel in question was stopped by Murray Irrigation officers so it would not spin in the wind and give a false reading when there was virtually no water in the channel.
Wind can often play havoc with wheels if the water does not reach fill level.
Mr Maloney said there was a small amount of water in the channel, but not enough to run through the wheel and no productive water has been through it for three years because of low or no allocations.
Mr Maloney sold his water this year and the only water to go through the wheel in question was to fill the dam at his family home, which he said was metered.
If water was being stolen it would be stolen from other farmers, “which just wasn’t happening”.
“I can assure you it would be a brave man to steal water from other irrigators in this area,” Mr Maloney said, arguing the attitude to water theft among irrigators was “quite the opposite” to what Mr Whetstone alleged.
“Mr Whetstone was driven around by me and given a tour of this district to show him and others that we, like farmers in South Australia, have very little water right now and what we do have is used very efficiently,” Mr Maloney said.
“It’s pure political opportunism, and Mr Whetstone has reaffirmed our suspicions that South Australia has a completely parochial attitude towards water reform.”
Email a friend