Tourist Operators Left High And Dry On Eildon's Shores
The Age
Saturday May 4, 2002
Welcome to Greg Smith's waterworld. He pays $3879 a year to rent this "waterfront" land on the north-west extremity of Lake Eildon.
Mr Smith owns and runs a caravan park at Bonnie Doon. He pays rent to Goulburn-Murray Water so his patrons will have access to the lake.
There's just one problem. For the past five years there has been no water frontage for at least nine months a year, yet the fee has remained the same.
Says Mr Smith: ``This year we got water from (Melbourne) Cup weekend until the first week in January. The caravan park further upstream hasn't seen any water in five years."
Since 1996, the lake's catchment has had record low rain. At the same time, farmers who draw water from the lake downstream are selling excess water on the open market.
In 1999-2000 the lake dropped to its lowest level on record, from 38 to 14 per cent capacity. Present levels are at just over 20 per cent.
The problem for those in the tourist industry is that most housing and infrastructure is on the lake's extremities - the first areas to lose water when the level drops.
At the other end of the lake at Howqua Inlet, Sandra and Jim Duell also run a caravan park. "We have lost 25 per cent of our permanent vans," says Mrs Duell. ``Most of them are being taken up to the Murray.
"One family who left a week ago had been here 27 years, they were bawling their eyes out. Their sons had grown up having their holidays here. One of the sons said to me there was only one reason they were leaving and he pointed to the dry lake bed."
What rankles Mr Smith is that under State Government regulations that control the Goulburn-Murray Water statutory authority, farmers who draw irrigation water released further downstream are getting a guaranteed 100 per cent of entitlements.
And under tradeable water rights that have been in place since the early 1990s, users can sell excess water.
Tourism interests claim that in 1996-97, coinciding with the beginning of a drought, the authority further mismanaged the lake's water by offering irrigators a bonus 100 per cent to sell on top of their entitlement.
The result was that the lake's level plunged from 100 per cent in spring 1996 to 60 per cent at the end of summer '97. In 1997-98 irrigators were offered a 10 per cent bonus and the lake dropped from 68 per cent to 25 per cent. Even with the lake at slightly more than 20 per cent capacity, it still contains a water volume two-thirds that of Port Phillip Bay. From the outset, the lake's function was to supply water for agriculture irrigation. That water now sustains a downstream economy based on stone fruit and dairying estimated at up to $8 billion a year.
Now four of the lakeside towns - Howqua Inlet, Macs Cove, Bonnie Doon and Jamieson - are facing a dry lakebed. That leaves only Gough's Bay near Mansfield, the area downstream from Peppin Point and Eildon region with water access.
The state seat to the north is Benalla, which fell to Labor in a 2000 by-election. Benalla MP Denise Allen said she had been pressuring the authority to be more consultative.
The authority's manager of headwaters, Ian Hawley, said the drought was the main reason the lake was low and the authority's charter was to provide water for irrigation.
He said that if tourism interests wanted water retained in the lake they could pay for it by buying a permanent right that would cost up to $1000 a megalitre (the volume of an Olympic swimming pool). The present price for irrigators is $18 to $30 a megalitre.
Mr Smith claims that when he complained to the authority about the size of his fee and threatened to withhold it, they threatened to fence off his caravan park from the foreshore and bulldoze his launching ramps.
The official authority line is that there is a disputes procedure allowing operators to review their leases every three to five years, based on valuations.
But Mr Smith said the authority valuer had told him property values had increased and if he objected it would cost him more in legal fees than he could possibly gain.
Last Monday, the Duells and other tourism operators went to a meeting at Eildon township. It was conducted by a public relations consultant, hired by the authority. The participants were given $50 travelling expenses and a souvenir pen.
A spokesman for the authority said it was a focus group so the authority could hear people's attitudes on matters of water management.
Said Mrs Duell: "I would have been more impressed if they had managed the water properly when they had it in 1996, than calling us over there for a meeting."
© 2002 The Age
