Who should manage the Snowy River?

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6.1 Future management

The Snowy River Alliance believes the answer to this question is so critical to the future of the Snowy River that we insist the Snowy Water Inquiry and the stakeholder governments give serious consideration to the future management options for the Snowy River.

We should start by reflecting back to see why the Snowy River is so degraded. The original Snowy Mountains Hydro Power Act 1949 placed an obligation for the Snowy Mountains Authority to release water ( less than one per cent of the original flow) into the Snowy River. In the main this amount was to enable consumptive and riparian usage according to the judgements at the time. No judgement or any other value was placed on the Snowy River. Further to this, the Snowy Mountains Authority (represented by the Commonwealth, New South Wales and Victorian Governments), nor any other water authority, had any direct obligation to manage the impacts created by this diversion. The Snowy River was left to die.

We now know that:

• The impacts of decisions can be under-estimated or unknown.
• Society's value judgements change within relatively short time frames.
• The interplay of land and water ecosystems are complex.
• Direct responsibility and accountability must be delegated to the stakeholders to manage the regulated environment, otherwise it won't be managed adequately.
• Where there are inter-basin transfers of water, decisions relating to those transfers and consumptive water allocations must be constrained by the environmental needs in both catchments.
• To manage our natural resources sustainably we need to have management systems that are flexible.
• Consumptive water use for hydroelectricity or irrigation, needs to be recognised and managed in a manner that is opportunistic rather than absolute. (Snowy Hydro is consumptive. It empties whole rivers.)

The Snowy River Alliance believes that an appropriate management body must be formed to have direct responsibility for managing the regulated Snowy River.

The management body:

• would need to be represented equally by New South Wales and Victoria, the two States that the Snowy runs through,
• should receive a budget from the stakeholder governments for the ongoing management of the Snowy River,
• must have community representation from the Snowy catchment in both States,
• should have the necessary professional skill base,
• should be an educational link with the Snowy communities including local government, working to maximise the returns for the Snowy River's ecology,
• should be an important resource base for scientific research and development of annual flow regimes in the Snowy catchment, and
• should be an established link between the Snowy communities, the scientific panel (set up under the Snowy Hydro Act) and the stakeholder governments.

Essentially this primary responsibility would ensure that the Snowy River be included in an ongoing management strategy funded by the users of Snowy Water.

The Snowy River Alliance believes that a decision to allocate water to the Snowy River without addressing this vital issue will place undue pressure and commitment on the Snowy communities to fix up the damage caused by the regulation. The Dalgety community has already been required to contribute a portion of the cost toward a river management plan. That has only become necessary because the water was cut off by the Snowy Scheme.