A new One Basin CRC project is combining the social, ecological, economic and ethical dimensions of waterflows in a unique approach to help water managers consider how their operations affect everyone.

When spring arrives in the mid-Murray River, a unique collaboration between the Commonwealth Environmental Water Holder and the Murray Irrigation company sees dozens of irrigation channels switch over from their usual duty of watering wheat and barley crops, to supplying environmental water to the vibrant creeks and wetlands of the Edward-Wakool River System.

This natural ‘changeover’ between irrigation and environmental flows is not only vital to the lifecycles of several threatened species – including the Australasian bittern and the southern bell frog – but shows the lifechanging possibilities of using private infrastructure for the very ‘public’ good of environmental water.

Examples of irrigation water delivery being modified to achieve ‘co-benefits’ for the environment are surprisingly rare. Currently, water is delivered for communities, irrigators, and the environment across the Murray-Darling Basin by a multitude of federal, state and local agencies – usually for very specific purposes, and often missing out on opportunities to address multiple needs.

River operators and irrigation infrastructure operators also face multilayered uncertainties around water availability, demands, transmission losses, and unregulated inflows, which can muddy their decision-making further. But in recent years, the arrival of precise waterflow monitoring technologies – increasingly integrating different operators and river systems – has made it easier to plan and adapt large-scale water deliveries to benefit multiple users.

Shared values

The need to promote ‘co-benefits’ of increasingly scarce water is the subject of an exciting new project that brings together one of the largest groups of water users, authorities, irrigators, and scientists ever to tackle a single piece of research within the One Basin CRC. Project lead Serena Hamilton, at the Australian National University’s Institute for Water Futures, is heartened by the shared values of partners with traditionally very different approaches to water.

‘There’s been so much conflict around different water values,’ says Dr Hamilton, ‘but the feeling I’m getting from the people I’m collaborating with is that everyone seems to recognise the need for some environmental flows to prevent the most vulnerable riverine ecosystems becoming further degraded – if not lost forever.’

Alongside ANU, the project draws on the expertise of the Murray–Darling Basin Authority, the Universities of Melbourne and Adelaide, the Water Technology consultancy, and Murrumbidgee Irrigation, which has emerged as something of a flagbearer for waterwise technologies that try to find a balance between economic, social and environmental outcomes.

These core partners are backed by a supporting cast of technology and engineering companies, irrigators, water authorities, and farm lobby groups, which together should ensure both practical and sustainable outcomes from the three-year project which got underway in June.

The long view

As its name implies, the multiple benefits project aims to use its partners’ rich and varied expertise to develop new tools and processes to help water authorities and other operators adopt more holistic planning approaches that consider all water users – from towns and industries, to First Nations communities, visitors and recreational users – as well as knowledge of long-term climate, environmental flows, flooding, and other demands and constraints.

The project aims to develop assessment tools that examine the ecological, cultural, social and economic benefits of different water transfers and deliveries, to help river operators and irrigation infrastructure operators find synergies or ‘co-benefits’ between various users. By better understanding overbank flows, water availability, demands, and transmission losses, it hopes to generate a broader picture of water uses and values across the landscape that will encourage water managers to optimise the timing and duration of water releases to make them more equitable.

‘As water becomes increasingly scarce, I believe this approach will lead to exciting new possibilities for managing our water more effectively,’ says Dr Seth Westra, Professor of Hydrology and Climate Risk at the University of Adelaide and One Basin’s Research Director.

‘I’m absolutely thrilled to see such a wide range of partners coming together to collaborate on how we can maximise the value of our water. Research only makes an impact when it’s adopted by someone, and what better way to encourage adoption than by having those same groups involved in designing the project from the very start?’

A solid foundation

Like several Round 1 projects, the multiple benefits project will benefit from the findings of two quickstart projects that were also hosted at One Basin’s Griffith Hub by ANU computer scientist Joseph Guillaume. A highly-regarded ‘uncertainty specialist’, Joseph’s team spent a year studying demand forecasting and fault detection in large-scale irrigation systems, and implementation of these modelling tools by industry partner organisations. Learnings from the two projects around the co-design and adoption of new technology will now feed into the multiple benefits project.

‘The partners in these projects are the ones who will use the tools, so they’re very practical, informed by users who will share this intellectual property with others in the future,’ explains Dr Guillaume. ‘We want to set this innovation cycle in motion so we can continue developing new algorithms after the projects have finished and make them  accessible to others.’

Murrumbidgee Irrigation, which owns the Griffith Hub building, is already testing the models from the research with Dr Guillaume’s team, and sees advances in data-driven irrigation as vital to the management of thirsty crops including almonds and cotton in a water-scarce future.

‘With more water-intensive crops, we need to be more cognisant of our water use in specific locations, and fortunately we have the technology to do this,’ says CEO Brett Jones. ‘But doing it together, sharing information on what works and what doesn’t… we need this trust and knowledge exchange if we’re to enable our rivers and our farmers to maintain their productivity in the years ahead.’

Murrumbidgee Irrigation delivers water to approximately 3,500 landholders from small market gardens to large cotton and rice farms – all with different entitlements, priority levels, and responsibilities. While the company has growing links to data from its tech-savvy clients, as well as models that consider things like soil moisture, evaporation and weather, the multiple benefits project will add broader regional information to help managers better provide for the water needs of communities and the environment.

‘We still see a lot of fragmentation across the basin, with local, state and federal agencies and organisations often making decisions about one water use at a time,’ says Dr Hamilton. ‘Environmental flow deliveries are often being planned in isolation of deliveries to farmers or communities, when each has potential co-benefits to the others.’

Starting with discovery

The project has got underway with a series of workshops with industry partners from across the southern basin, discovering the processes, operating systems, and regulations that guide irrigation infrastructure operators and water authorities in their decision-making. From this will come a blueprint of the governance, procedures and tools required to manage water deliveries for multiple benefits. A ‘Multiple Benefits Framework’ will be developed, documenting different uses and values of water, as well as a series of case studies to test the framework, and act as a catalyst for important conversations around different users’ needs.

University of Melbourne researchers are also developing a rapid inundation model which will enable floodplain modelling, which traditionally takes several days, to be completed in a matter of minutes – promoting understanding of the potential outcomes of overbank events, including return flow. 

‘So much science doesn’t get out into the real world, so we want to co-design these tools to suit specific user needs and operating systems,’ explains Dr Hamilton. ‘We learned a lot about our end users during the quickstart projects, which developed models that are now being tested by Murrumbidgee Irrigation and Coleambally Irrigation – which have very forward-thinking attitudes towards technology and environmental water that are great to work with.’

‘Most of the organisations that have joined One Basin CRC have a strong sense that across the basin we’re unlikely to ever see more water, so we have to use the water that we have a lot more wisely. And that means working together and sharing ideas, resources and data.’

More information:

• Multiple benefits project
• Quickstart on demand forecasting
• Quickstart on data collection and anomaly detection