New England locals gather for water talks in Tamworth

That's according to University of New England (UNE) riverine expert Professor Martin Thoms, who says decisions can't just be left to people living in Sydney and Canberra, or we will rue the outcomes.

On Wednesday, August 16, Professor Thoms addressed a group of like-minded community members as part of the TamTalks series, where they watched a screening of the documentary The River Runs Dry.

The 2019 film contains a series of interviews with Indigenous people, farmers, ecologists and other experts about the impact that the drying up of the Namoi River had during the 2017 to 2020 drought.

Professor Thoms said he hoped the documentary would inspire more people to get active to prevent a similar catastrophe happening again along the Namoi River.

He said a big part of drought prevention is about properly managing the floodplains and ensuring there is enough vegetation for the rain to soak into.

"This is about the fifth water forum we have held and we are getting an increase in numbers all the time," Professor Thoms said.

"So, I am positively buoyed by the community input. The more people we can get involved, the greater the voice in making decisions about our water."

Professor Thoms is a member of the Water In the Landscape Initiative (WILI) which launched in Tamworth this year, and serves as a local collaborative "water voice" for the region.

"WILI is just the start of having a water voice for the region, it's all about the community," he said.

During his talk, Professor Thoms said a share of the 435GL of water that the NSW government will "try and recover from the entire Murray Darling Basin" will have to come from the Namoi River.

"Those living in Sydney and Canberra make all the policy decisions...they say they talk to us but that doesn't really happen, so a collaborative approach is needed," he said.

Read also:

WILI member and Tamworth Regional Land Council's Wayne Chaffey took some of the questions from the floor, and said afterwards that people need to better manage the rainfall.

"We've got to make sure that at the top end of the [Namoi] catchment, we look after every drop that we can," he said.

"It's got to land on vegetation not on soil, and it's got to be soaked in and stay in that part of the landscape for as long as possible, so it then just leeches out more slowly into the river systems."

After watching the documentary, self-confessed Tamworth "townie", Alex Hunt, who is a "former bushie from out west south of Bourke", said he is troubled about where "our old land is heading".

"It alarms me about whether we have overallocated it [water in the Murray Darling]," Mr Hunt said.

Tim Watts attended the event because he lives in the upper catchment area of the Namoi and said he is very concerned about water issues.

"There has got to be some big decisions made about the role of irrigation in the landscape and how we can improve filtration in the upper [Namoi] catchment," Mr Watts said.

The UNE started TamTalks in 2022 as a way of bridging the gap between academic research and the general public.

Our journalists work hard to provide local, up-to-date news to the community. This is how you can continue to access our trusted content: