Project Leaders: Suzanne Wilson, Wilson Land Management Services and Richard Ivey, Ivey ATP

Background

Dryland salinity and rising water tables have long been recognised as significant and worsening problems across many rural areas of Australia, causing a reduction in agricultural production and damaging the natural environment. However, it is now becoming apparent that dryland salinity is also becoming a very serious and costly problem in many rural towns and cities, and imposing costs on:

• Local Government;
• Urban and rural households;
• Commercial and industrial businesses;
• State Government agencies and utilities;
• The environment; and
• Cultural heritage.

Despite the magnitude of salinity problems in our rural and urban areas, catchment groups still lack the tools to confidently answer the question 'What are the full impacts of dryland salinity in our catchment and how do we value them?'. Without this information, it is difficult for catchment groups and governments to assess how much effort and money they should allocate to its management.

Improving our knowledge of the full nature and costs of dryland salinity across the Murray-Darling Basin in both rural and urban areas will therefore serve three main purposes.

• Collecting this information at the sub-catchment level will help catchment communities more accurately gauge the importance of dryland salinity in their urban and rural areas. It will also enable them to prepare or refine their Local Action Plans, and to enhance their case for funding from various programs.
• Collecting this information at the regional level will help catchment communities prepare or refine their Regional Strategies.
• Collecting this information at the State, Basin or National level will help federal, State and local governments take a more strategic approach to policy development and on-ground investment on a broad or Basin-wide scale.

Furthermore, improving our knowledge of the extent, severity and cost of dryland salinity in urban areas will dramatically enhance the case for boosting total funding available for urban salinity management.

Project Objectives

To help identify the actual impacts and costs of dryland salinity across the entire Murray-Darling Basin, the Murray-Darling Basin Commission and Land & Water Australia under the National Dryland Salinity Program have funded a three-year research project entitled 'Determining the full costs of dryland salinity across the Murray-Darling Basin. The primary aims of this project are to:

• Produce a Guidelines  document that catchment groups can work through to help answer the questions 'What are the full impacts of dryland salinity in our catchment and how do we value them?';
• Implement the Guidelines to obtain actual information on the current nature, distribution and cost of dryland salinity to all stakeholders across each catchment in the Murray-Darling Basin;
• Present salinity cost estimates to all stakeholder groups in a series of Regional-level reports;
• Trial the Guidelines outside the Basin to ensure the approach is applicable across Australia; and
• Store all final results on a centralised Basin-wide GIS and 'user friendly' CD-ROM.

History of the project (What has been done and how)

The project began with a review of the various known impacts of dryland salinity, and methods that have previously been applied to quantify these impacts in dollar terms.

This information was then used to prepare a draft Guidelines document that consisted of three distinct parts:

Part 1 outlines the background to the entire Guidelines document. It presents an overview of the nature and costs of dryland salinity in urban and rural areas, and demonstrates how this information fits into the bigger picture of preparing a Local Action Plan and transparent cost-sharing arrangements.

Part 2 presents a 'stand-alone' description of the types of dryland salinity impacts that may occur in urban and rural areas of a catchment.

Part 3 provides the detailed instructions, tools and proformas an appropriately skilled reader will need to actually assess the nature and impact costs of dryland salinity to various agricultural and non-agricultural groups, the environment and cultural heritage in their Region.

This Guidelines document was then revised after an extensive review process was undertaken by a panel of experienced natural resource economists, various industry and community representatives, and participants at a National workshop.

The methodologies presented in this revised Guidelines document were then applied by the project team in collaboration with catchment representatives and agency staff to obtain an actual assessment of the impacts and costs of salinity to all stakeholder groups, the environment and cultural heritage in most catchments throughout the Murray-Darling Basin. Note: all remaining catchments will be completed by the end of this project.

The methodologies were also applied in two catchments outside the Basin, notably the Lower Fitzroy catchment in Queensland and the Mount Pleasant sub-catchment of the River Torrens in South Australia. The purpose of these extra trials was to confirm the Guidelines are applicable to catchments outside the Basin - particularly in catchments where salinity is just an emerging problem and hence community awareness is low.

The lessons learnt during the application of this draft Guidelines document both within the Basin and in the two trial catchments outside the Basin have now been incorporated in the final version of this Guidelines document.

All project results have been written up in a series of Regional-level reports. These reports present a detailed description of the nature and costs of saline town water supplies and high saline water tables to all stakeholders, the environment and cultural heritage, at the township, LGA and catchment levels.

All project results have also been downloaded into a 'user-friendly' interactive CD and a Basin-wide GIS dataset to promote the final results at the end of the project.

Research findings to date - Summary

While not completed, this project so far has demonstrated that saline town water supplies and high saline water tables are a truly significant and costly problem to various stakeholders across the Murray-Darling Basin. What has been particularly surprising has been that in many catchments, it is the costs of salinity to households, businesses and public infrastructure - and not the costs from lost agricultural production - that make the largest contribution to total costs in these areas.

The project has also demonstrated that the Guidelines document is an extremely useful tool for identifying the nature, impacts and costs of dryland salinity at the local or regional level, particularly where salinity is just an emerging problem and hence community awareness is low.

Future directions

This project is now in its final stages. In the remaining few months, the project team will be focusing on finalising our analysis of Queensland and NSW catchments, and on the preparation of promotional material to promote the findings of our project. Again while not exhaustive, this promotional material will include:

A final Guidelines document showing the steps catchment groups and others need to work through to answer the questions 'What are the impacts of dryland salinity in our catchment and how do we value them?';

• A final report on the project;
• A full gloss Technical Report;
• A poster-sized GIS-generated map showing the distribution and cost of dryland salinity to all stakeholders across the Murray-Darling Basin;
• A 'user friendly' and interactive CD-ROM that will enable users to access detailed maps and EXCEL tables showing the nature and cost of dryland salinity to households, commerce & industry, Local Governments, State Government Agencies, Road & Rail Authorities, Water, Gas and Electricity suppliers, agricultural producers, the environment and cultural heritage in each of the 26 catchments located in the Murray-Darling Basin; and
• A Basin-wide centralised GIS dataset on the costs of dryland salinity to all stakeholders for inclusion in the MDBC's 'Basin-in-a-box' package

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