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Volume 27, Thursday 8th February, 2007
FIGHT LOOMS OVER BASIN By Les Rochester
Above: The holding dam at BHP BIlliton’s Desalination Plant
New Area Manager Liz Rogers with Financial Services Consultant Sara Lynch
Prime Minister John Howard has opened a can of worms in his $10 billion pledge to take control of the nation’s water resources, including the Great Artesian Basin. He said water extraction from the Great Artesian Basin would be capped and use of water from the giant aquifer would be subject to pricing and entitlements. Mr. Howard said this would also apply to the mining industry. He inferred BHP Billiton’s Olympic Dam mine near Roxby Downs extracts about 30 million litres of water a day from the basin, free of charge. “Everybody’s got to make a contribution to solving this problem,” the Prime Minister said in his speech announcing the bold initiative. His initiative included taking back control of the Murray-Darling basin from the state’s in which he pledged $10 billion in water projects over the next 10 years in return for the states ceding their 100year-old constitutional control of the river system to the Commonwealth. However, it’s his plan to tax water taken
from the Great Artesian Basin that has caused most consternation in remote South Australia. Chairman of the Outback Lakes Group, Colin Greenfield from Billa Kalina station, near Roxby Downs said there will be a fair hue and cry especially from pastoralists, if the Prime minister goes down that track. “He really hasn’t thought this through. The president of the South Australian Farmers Federation, Wayne Cornish, said it is going to be an issue. “The problem we have is there’s no detail on the table from the PM, just blanket statements, we need to get a higher level of detail, on many things such as governance issues, and the different regulations operating on the Artesian Basin between the state’s.” he said. “There needs to be some really, really, really, good reasons for taxing water from the basin. “He has to overcome major hurdles such as access to the water, the allocation principles involved and the rights of pastoralists to use the water,” Mr. Cornish said. Continued page 5