Ord irrigators keep water rights following $4m fight

Ord farmers will get to hold on to their water entitlements after the WA Government tried to reduce their irrigation allocations by a third.

The Department of Water and Environmental Regulation has been embroiled in a five-year fight with the Ord Irrigation Cooperative after the government body wanted to cut water allocations for Ord Stage 1 growers from 335 gigalitres to 246.5GL.

Irrigators found out on Friday they had successfully appealed a 2017 decision by the State Administrative Tribunal which ruled in favour of DWER slashing entitlements by 90GL a year for the 15,000ha of impacted land.

The review means farmers will now have access to the full 335GL for the next 10 years.

OIC chairman David Menzel grows melons, pumpkins, chickpeas and maize on 450ha of land and said the long awaited decision had been a relief.

“OIC is relieved that we finally have the decision. It has been a long five years arguing our case and over $4 million to get to this point,” he said.

“We are still to see if there is an appeal but are grateful the SAT has recognised the complexity of the case and been strongly convinced of our projected future need for the water we were originally licensed for.”

The State had built most of its case on reducing the allocations on a historic underuse of water entitlements.

The SAT judgement on Friday, signed off by the tribunal’s deputy president Judge David Parry, said while there had been underutilisation of the annual water entitlement by OIC there were clear reasons why policy’s around unused water could be set aside.

“There is not likely to be any alternative or competing user for any part of this annual water entitlement over the 10 year term of the licence,” it said.

“There is sufficient water within the 750 GL per year allocation limit for the main Ord subarea to enable such development in the Ord East Kimberley Expansion Project as is likely to occur over the next 10 years.”