Tasmania's largest river, the South Esk, temporarily stopped flowing in 2020, after low seasonal rainfall and large-scale industrial use placed undue pressure on the river's ecosystem and experts fear the the state faces environmental failure on the scale of the Murray Darling Basin if political ambition pursues the expansion of competing industries such as "green hydrogen" and the Battery of the Nation/Marinus Link projects.
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The campaign trail for Tasmania, and particularly for the marginal seat of Bass has been littered with funding commitments that will affect Tasmania's waterways and place further pressure on a system that is already under pressure from competing industries, including the exponential expansion of the state's irrigation schemes, along with the potential of hydrogen production and the expansion of pumped hydro.
A hydrogen hub at Bell Bay received bipartisan support on the campaign trail, and lats week federal Labor announced it would spend $100 million expanding tranche three of Tasmania's irrigation scheme, which is six new schemes for the state.
Tasmania already has 15 existing schemes and academics, scientists and former employees of the state water resources department have shared their fears that increasing turbidity (or the movement of the water as its churned up for power generation, or extracted for irrigation) will have irreversible impacts and lead to fish kills and impact on water quality.
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However, Natural Resources Tasmania maintains water allocation in Tasmania balances the needs of industry and the protection of the environment.
An NRE spokesperson said water allocation was managed by the department with advice from Rural Water Round Table, made up of industry stakeholders and experts.
"The department also continues to undertake a range of research projects into the health of Tasmania's waterways. This includes hydrological modelling of water catchment use, and the state-wide river health monitoring program," they said.
Environmental decline of Tasmania's rivers was compiled in a report by Natural Resources Tasmania (formerly DPIPWE), a report that was never made public until a Right to Information request was made by the Tasmanian Greens.
A leaked copy of the report, Temporal and Spatial Patterns in River Health across Tasmania, and the Influence of Environmental Factors, obtained by The Examiner, was published in February 2020 and shows that environmental factors such as broad-scale agricultural land use (particularly stock grazing), water electrical conductivity and water use (capture and extraction of water) are associated with poor river condition.
"Thirty-five of the 85 sites examined had declining trends in river health indicators, whereas 51 sites had stable trends. Sites with declining trends were typically located at lower elevations in catchments than sites with stable trends," the report reads.
The facts are in stark contrast to the political rhetoric coming from both the state and federal levels of the government - who have labelled Tasmania a climate leader, and the "Battery of the Nation" as they push forward with plans for the controversial Marinus Link and the "green hydrogen hub".
The country's power generation woes have been placed on the shoulders of Tasmania, who will provide power (at a price) to Victoria largely produced by "renewable" hydroelectricity produced in Tasmania.
Deepa Kumar from the Tasmanian Institute of Agriculture has seen for herself the woes of water mismanagement, after completing her PhD at the Murray Darling Basin before moving to Tasmania to work with the University, where she studies "the social side of water" and the intersect between the community and governance.
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She said when she arrived she "couldn't believe" how many irrigation schemes the state had, and during her research had uncovered "pockets of tension" that already exist among industries fighting for the same limited resource supply.
"There are catchments where there is the need to make trade-off decisions. There are already pockets of tension that exists in Tasmania," she said.
"There is this perception of plenty in Tasmania...but we have 12 per cent of Australia's water in 2 per cent of the land mass. We have branded ourselves as carbon neutral but there are bigger things at stake."
Dr Kumar said while Tasmania had not yet reached the peak of the woes facing the Murray Darling Basin, it was heading that way, and said she feared that the rivers and water supply would face irreparable damage if action wasn't taken.
'I HAVE SEEN FISH KILLS'
On the front line of the decline of the river system is Gary France, from Tasmanian Anglers Alliance, who says he has watched the rivers degrade before his eyes.
Mr France runs a fly-fishing operation, and says the changes to the river are undeniable for those who have spent a lifetime there.
"Fish live in an environment where they tolerate certain temperatures and a certain chemistry in the environment. And you might not see that chemistry, so we have seen things occasionally like fish kills, which I have seen."
"And that can be brought about by emptying water or pulling it down very quickly, because the oxygen just disappears."
Mr France said there are sections of the Meander River that are covered in green slime, which indicates high nutrient levels.
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"So what you will see if the fish numbers will change. And you'd wonder if you could still drink that water, but over time you see that it [the slime] doesn't go away, it's something inherent in the long-term build up of pollution.
Mr France, who has presented at state and national energy conferences, said he was worried how the decisions that were being made now would affect future generations.
"Who is going to pay for those decisions? Our kids are going to pay with the quality of the drinking water and the ability to walk along the river bank with your dog and see birds. Birds don't exist without the insect life."
WATER STRATEGY 'A MANIFESTO'
The Tasmanian Government has drafted a rural water use strategy, but stakeholders and scientists say it's not worth the paper its written on and the strategy fails to take into account water use, metering, or the environmental impact.
There were 21 representations made on the draft strategy, which was released in June last year and many cited concerns over the lack of action regarding metering and allocation, and the way the strategy failed to account for potable water consumption and urban usage and management.
Former state water resources employee Chris Bobbi, who resigned from the department in protest, described the draft rural water use strategy as "a manifesto for expansion".
An NRE spokesperson said water allocation balanced the needs of industry and the environment, but there was a hierarchy.
"In allocating water, priority is given to domestic, public health, livestock and fire purposes, followed by environmental protection. The water allocation process is also underpinned by robust climate change modelling," the spokesperson said.
"Monitoring compliance of water usage is also completed by the department. Similar advice and services will be provided to support emerging industries such as a renewable hydrogen industry."
He, and others like the Tasmanian Independent Science Council believe the rural water use strategy has justified the state government's ambitious plans to grow agriculture to more than $1 billion by 2050 and its plans to invest heavily in "green hydrogen" and become the "Battery of the Nation" through pumped hydro.
WHERE'S THE SCIENCE?
The Tasmanian Independent Science Council, a group of like-minded academics who formed to provide advice to the public and the government regarding political policy have waded into the debate, with member Christine Coughanowr releasing two of four reports into Tasmania's river health and water management in the state.
Ms Coughanowr is a water quality and environmental scientist and has been involved in the project to clean up the Derwent River among other projects.
She said she first became concerned about the state of water management and river health after reading the submissions to the Tasmanian Rural Water Use Strategy.
"No one has really done the maths."
"What we are trying to do is pull all that information and put it in the public domain."
Concern over the state of Tasmania's rivers prompted Ms Coughanowr to research and author five reports into the state of the waterways, with the first published last year.
The findings from the report backed up the findings from the 2020 DPIPWE report, with 43 per cent of sites found to be impaired, with nearly 70 per cent of those showing a decline in the final five years of the program.
"Tasmania's freshwater resources can no longer be considered to be clean, green and abundant," Ms Coughanowr wrote in her report.
"River flows have declined in many rivers across the state, and accurate climate change impacts are difficult to predict other than increasing levels of variability both temporally and spatially. In short, we may already be at or beyond a tipping point, with serious concerns about the consequences of the next dry summer."
"This decline in river condition is playing out within the context of poor information about existing water use (due to limited metering), together with ambitious growth targets for agriculture (x5), salmon farming (x2), renewable energy (x2), mining and tourism. All of these activities depend on clean and abundant freshwater supplies. Where will it come from, and will it be at the expense of the health of our priceless river systems?"
WHISTLEBLOWER WALKS
An author on the 2020 river conditions report, former DPIPWE (now NRE) employee Chris Bobbi has been calling for state intervention since he resigned in disgust.
He said one of the triggers was when he noticed the South Esk had stopped flowing.
"It was disturbing, I could walk over the river and under the bridge; I had never seen that happen before, it has never happened for the South Esk in history," he said.
The South Esk River is Tasmania's largest river, it springs from the foothills of Ben Lomond and travels all the way from Mathinna, through Evandale before it meets up with the Meander River at Perth and Hadspen.
It also feeds into the Tamar Estuary, a 70-kilometre estuary that funnels into Bass Strait. The Tamar's sediment woes have been highly documented, with silt build-up and pollution from sewerage and agricultural practices damaging the estuary's health.
The South Esk incident was reported to his department by Mr Bobbi, but never recorded or investigated, a fact that contributed to his decision to resign from his role, following his work on the Temporal and Spatial Patterns in River Health, which he believed was not taken seriously by the department and was not made public after many attempts.
"Some of the results [in the report] were concerning and alarming and the report got sat on for far too long [by the department]. The lack of action in the regulatory area when rivers were literally drying up was ultimately what led to my resignation," he said."
Mr Bobbi said during his work he personally witnessed decline in rivers, not only the South Esk, but also others in the North including at Ringarooma, and the Great Forester River in the North East, where agriculture is a strong driver for the economy.
A key thread emerging from discussions from river health, is that there is lack of monitoring or reporting over allocation and usage, which the department says is false.
It says the Rural Water Use Strategy is the overarching guiding document and decisions about water allocation, metering and usage were guided by the Round Table.
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