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Holding derails Gippsland water strategyState Parliament has been told the Minister for Water, Tim Holding, has undermined the current consultative process to develop a sustainable water strategy for Gippsland. By Kevin Balshaw - 29th October 2009 - Back to News State Parliament has been told the Minister for Water, Tim Holding, has undermined the current consultative process to develop a sustainable water strategy for Gippsland.
The Member for Eastern Victoria, Philip Davis, said in debate on a motion on water recycling for Melbourne the decision to divert environmental flows from the Thomson River to the city made a joke of the regional water strategy.
Mr Davis said a Gippsland community consultative committee was working earnestly to assist in developing the strategy that was intended, as a Government discussion paper put it, to plan for a secure water future.
"The question is: how can you have a secure water future when the minister just peremptorily, in an ad hoc fashion, makes announcements that significantly divert water resources away from Gippsland on an ongoing basis?" he said.
"The minister has invited the community to participate in a detailed negotiation, then totally repudiated that process by unilaterally making an announcement to divert water out of the Gippsland Lakes catchment.
"The minister’s discussion paper says with respect to caps on the system under the Our Water Our Future commitment that the Gippsland basin is capped and fully allocated.
"Irrespective of this, the minister has decided to send more environmental flow to Melbourne."
Mr Davis said Minister Holding had shown contempt for the people of Gippsland, who would be profoundly affected by his policy decision, and it was understandable the region was outraged.
He said Gippslanders were well aware from long experience that once these decisions were made, they became irreversible.
Mr Davis quoted from an open letter to the minister from Watermark, a highly credible organisation established in 1999 to foster community action to conserve and enhance the catchment, shores and waters of the Gippsland Lakes.
In the letter, Watermark put on record "its strong opposition to any further allocation of water from the Thomson River as such would add to the severe impacts on the quality and quantity of water available to the vast RAMSAR listed wetlands which all rely on the Thomson/Latrobe systems for their future health".
Mr Davis said: "What is obvious to everyone but the minister is that if you continue to divert environmental flows from the rivers that feed the wetlands adjacent to the Gippsland Lakes, then they will die as they have been doing through this persistent drought.
"The Government is adding momentum to that decline in the value of those wetlands."
Source: http://gippsland.com/ Published by: kevin.balshaw@parliament.vic.gov.au
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