Landholders wanting to prepare for bushfires can now lawfully take up to 100,000 litres (0.1 ML) of water per year ‘and store it in a tank or dam for future firefighting purposes’, says the NSW Labor government.
In a media release, the NSW Minister for Emergency Services, Jihad Dib, said, ‘During a fire emergency, a landholder can now take water from surface water and groundwater sources on their land without needing to have a water licence and water use approval. This includes streams, creeks and rivers abutting the boundary’.
He says, ‘This commonsense exemption has been made via amendments to the Water Management (General) Regulation 2018’.
Mr Dib says, ‘The NSW government will carry out targeted periodic surveys of landholders to understand how the exemption is being used and to identify the extent and scale of water use’.
No reporting
‘While landholders are not required to submit reports, they are encouraged to log the volume of water they take under the exemption, for their own records’.
The Echo sought comment from NSW Greens MLC, Sue Higginson.
She replied, ‘Fire is deadly serious, and we need surge capacity to deal with wildfire, but it is reckless to think that we don’t need to take a regulatory approach to our most essential shared and common resource – water. Taking surface water from the ecosystem, particularly at times of scarcity, is serious business and can have life and death consequences. Rule changes like this exemption must be accurately accounted for.’
‘Allowing emergency use of unlicensed water for fighting bush fires might be necessary, but we cannot pretend that there is not the potential for abuse to occur owing to bad faith actors, and we certainly can’t assume that this will lead to necessary strategic and fair responses to fighting fires.
‘Allowing the storage of up to 100,000 litres per property per year requires strict reporting obligations on the amount of water taken and used. We run the risk of further diminishing water security in NSW and downstream states if massive volumes of water are removed from the system without a central reporting requirement.
‘This exemption is a tool, and tools have to be used correctly if they are going to be safe.
‘The government needs to look closely at the potential consequences and make sure there are checks and balance in place to prevent rampant water theft to take place under the guise of bush fire safety’, added Ms Higginson.
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