Salinity control, water reform and structural adjustment: the Tragowel Plains Irrigation district

Abstract

Deposited with permission of the author © 1999 Dr. Neil Francis BarrThe Tragowel Plains Irrigation District lies in the lower Loddon catchment of northern Victoria. Since the 1890s progressive development of the irrigation infrastructure of the Tragowel Plains has been accompanied by the development of irrigation induced soil salinity. In 1988 the State Government of Victoria supported the development of a community managed salinity management plan. At the same time, the water supply industry was significantly deregulated. Full cost recovery principles were applied to irrigation water pricing. Water entitlements were transformed into tradable commodities.The Tragowel Plains Salinity Plan was subsequently promoted by the Victorian government and the Loddon irrigation community as a model for encouraging structural change in a Commonwealth government facilitated regional development plan for the whole of the Loddon-Murray irrigation region. The process of developing this regional development plan revealed difference in the objectives of the various actors in this new planning process. The objective of community planners was the survival of the irrigation district. One of the objectives of Commonwealth was the transfer of water from low value use to high value use. These higher value uses were potentially elsewhere in the Murray Darling Basin. Further, these actors in the planning process used differing implicit models of the process of structural change in irrigation areas. The Commonwealth representatives had an implicit model of structural change in which farm consolidation was driven by the rate of exit from farming. They were also sceptical of the capacity of the Tragowel Plains salinity plan model to facilitate significant change in water use