Northern WA cattle stations call for Fitzroy-Derby River surface water rethink

Two of northern WA’s big cattle players have called for the State Government to reconsider tight restrictions on surface water restrictions for the Fitzroy-Derby River.

Gina Rinehart’s Hancock Agriculture, which owns and operates Liveringa and Fossil Downs Stations, along with Roebuck Silage and Hay, has urged against access to only groundwater as outlined in the draft management plan.

The sentiment was also echoed in a submission by Gogo Station.

Submissions were made publicly available by the Department of Water and Environmental Regulation on July 15.

Under the proposed plan, the use of groundwater is restricted to 50GL a year, with 25GL of that to be put towards the proposed Fitzroy-Derby Aboriginal Water Holdings.

The draft reasserts the previous commitment from the State Government not to dam the river, or its tributaries, to protect the waterways.

“We are concerned . . . that a fixed limit on the volume granted in a single application . . . risks undermining the necessity for water in all years, it being impossible to plan how much rain will fall each year, and if insufficient water is permitted for cattle, other stock and feed, cattle and other stock will unnecessarily and cruelly die,” the submission from Hancock Agriculture said.

An extensive report by the CSIRO in 2018 recommended an allocation of 170GL per year of groundwater and 1700GL per year of surface water.

The allocation under the proposed draft plan represents about 0.36 per cent of the surface water volume previously identified by the CSIRO as available for sustainable extraction from the area.

The CSIRO report further estimated that under those figures the region would benefit from $1.1 billion of additional annual economic activity and generate more than 4500 jobs.

Hancock Agriculture said the reopening of the Kimberley Meat Company abattoir, slated for later this year, relied on a steady supply of cattle from the region to remain viable.

“Regional beef processing capacity near Derby is being recommissioned after an extended closure, and its viability depends on a reliable, year-round local cattle supply, which depends in turn on the capacity to produce irrigated fodder required to feed the stock, including through drought or flood annual conditions,” the Hancock Agriculture submission said.

“Major regional fodder sources have been lost in recent years, and southern and interstate supply is constrained by freight cost and biosecurity requirements, so local food production matters increasingly to the wellness, indeed life, of cattle, processing, live-export and pastoral sectors.”

Hancock Agriculture rejected the groundwater framework as an appropriate long-term basis for water management in the river’s catchment area.

Gogo Station’s submission said increased fodder production in the Fitzroy catchment would lead to economic growth in the region and support the operations of the KMC once it reopened.

“The Kimberley cattle industry would be a direct and early beneficiary of increased irrigated fodder production,” it said.

“Cattle in northern Australia follow an annual cycle of liveweight gain in the wet season and liveweight loss in the dry season, with body condition constrained by the quality and availability of native pastures.

“Irrigated fodder reduces the age at turnoff and opens access to premium markets that current dry-season weight loss prevents.”

Since 2017, Gogo Station has had an ongoing application to develop up to 8355ha of land for irrigated cropland and associated infrastructure, but this was knocked back by WA’s Environmental Protection Authority during the public consultation period.

In its reasoning, the EPA said the assessment had been terminated because of the refusal of the associated water licence application by the relevant decision-making authority, and its likely inconsistency with current government policy surrounding the management of the river.

There are no rights of appeal to the EPA’s decision.

More than 50,000 submissions were made for the plan’s public consultation, which closed on June 30, with the vast majority of responses arising from a template by public environmental campaign Kimberley — Like Nowhere Else.