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Wednesday, May 14, 2014
Locally owned and proudly independent
Kisses for
MUM Andrew Larard from Mareeba Community Kindergarten gives his mum Alison a kiss for Mother’s Day. On Sunday May 11, mums all over the region were spoilt with gifts and treated to special surprises on the one day of the where mother’s are honoured by their children.
Divide on local irrigation By Boyd Robertson Stakeholder opinion is still divided on attempts to shift management of the Mareeba-Dimbulah area’s irrigation scheme to a locally-managed model, although the organisation behind the change claims there is wide support for the idea. A meeting held by the Interim Board of the Mareeba-Dimbulah Irrigation Area at Mareeba Soccer Club on May 5 outlined feasibility of setting up an irrigator-owned company that would be called Tinaroo Water Limited. The interim board claims it can run the system up to 10 per cent more efficiently than government-owned corporation Sunwater currently does. The board has also proposed a total separation payment of $70 million to the government and
expects a response to that figure later in the year. Interim board chairman Joe Moro said that the irrigators that control the majority of the system’s allocation are in favour of further investigating local management. “We are confident that we will have majority support based on water allocation,” Mr Moro said after the May 5 meeting. “There are some with doubts as to if we should move away from government control and they have valid reasons for those doubts, which is why we will be investigating further into the feasibility of the idea. “We have won strong support to put forward our business proposal to government and to keep talking about ensuring a new entity will be in the best place to ensure the long-term future of irrigation in the area.”
However Dennis Howe, managing director of the Tableland’s largest farming organisation Howe Farming, said that he still isn’t convinced about moving to local management, although he did say there would be upsides to the idea. “One of the problems of going to a local control system is knowing if they are going to spend the money that needs to be spent to maintain and improve the system,” he said. “Sunwater has been doing a good job so far when it comes to managing and maintain the system – I believe irrigation systems are a national asset and should be treated as such. “However there’s two sides to this – if the government is just going to operate on a costrecovery basis then we are better off to be locally owned.” The state government has said that local man-
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agement of Sunwater’s irrigation channels will only proceed if the business proposals can demonstrate that the move is in the long-term interest of irrigators and the State. Mr Moro said it was important to take the opportunity for local management while it was present, but said the interim board would not be rushing things. “Our business proposal offers irrigators a chance to chart their own destiny by owning the assets,” he said. “We don’t have a timeframe or deadline for this – the government wants to move quickly but we want to get it right because it is a big decision for the area.” Efforts to establish local management of the Mareeba-Dimbulah Irrigation Area first entered official stages in 2012.
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