Irrigators await decision on water buy-back

The Federal Government says a decision on how much irrigators will get for their water entitlements will be made within a fortnight. Up to $60 million is available for purchases, which will count towards any water cuts in the final basin plan.

The last of five tender rounds for the year closed last week, with an estimated 500 applications submitted from southern parts of the Murray-Darling Basin.

The purchases have been made as part of the Australian Government's "Restoring the Balance in the Murray-Darling Basin water entitlement purchasing" program. The Restoring the Balance program is an important component of the Water for the Future initiative. The Australian Government has committed $3.1 billion over 10 years to purchase water in the Murray-Darling Basin.

The program will complement a range of other measures to achieve sustainable water management in the Basin.

A spokesman, Colin Mues, says it is still too early to give an indicative price for what South Australian irrigators might get.

"It really depends on the prices that are nominated by the sellers, so we'll go through the assessment process and see which ones are acceptable value for money and we'll pace that price when we've done the assessment," he said.

Mr Mues says the average price paid to SA irrigators in the last round was about $1,850 a megalitre.

"It'll really depend on the outcome of the assessment to see what average price we get from this round but again as soon as we've done that assessment, we're going to be releasing the prices up on our website so people can understand the prices being paid for each of the tender rounds," he said.

See the original article here.