Water, Land and People - Goulburn Broken Catchment ...

The review has forecast what changes the Farm
Program will need to be aware of and respond to
in the immediate future. The Farm Program has
worked with the “Irrigation Futures in the Goulburn
Broken Catchment” project conducted by the DPI.
That work shows that there is likely to be a large
change in the way landowners will manage their
land and water in the future. A major challenge
for the Farm Program is to work towards the
smooth transition of the water reform changes
that will come into effect from July 2007 and the
Farm Program Review concludes with a series of
recommendations that address these issues for the
future of the Farm Program.
Development of Irrigation Development
Guidelines
The Farm Program has had an important role in
the development and implementation of Irrigation
Development Guidelines since their inception in
the GB CMA area in 1998. The key purpose of the
Irrigation Development Guideline process is to
identify and minimise the risk of any adverse side
effects of irrigation on the environment and third
parties.
Since 2004 the Farm Program has taken on a
greater role through the provision of an Irrigation
Development Coordinator for the SIR to oversee
the implementation of these guidelines. The primary
role is to assist landowners through the Irrigation
Development Guideline process by being the
single point of referral for the landowner when
dealing with other agencies. They also ensure
that the guidelines are being consistently applied.
These guidelines are triggered when an irrigation
development is proposed on land that has not been
irrigated previously.
The Farm Program has taken a leading role in the
revision and modification of the existing guidelines
both at a catchment and State level, to ensure that
they reflect the changes outlined by the Minister for
Water in the water reforms to be introduced in July
2007.
With the introduction of water-use licences in 2007,
these guidelines will be applied to:
• Existing irrigation properties where
redevelopment of the property will require an
alteration to an existing water-use licence,
• Properties being developed to include
irrigation and a new water-use licence will be
required.
Changes in Community Capacity through
Local Area Planning
As part of the Farm Program Review, reviews have
also been conducted in the eight Local Area Plans
being implemented in the SIR. This evaluation
investigated the impact of Local Area Plans on
accelerating the implementation of the Goulburn
Broken Regional Catchment Strategy, with work
also carried out to determine changes in community
capacity as a result of Local Area Planning. The
results of this evaluation have shown overwhelmingly
that in the two to five years since the launch of the
Local Area Plans, the capacity of the communities
involved has increased.
The Local Area Plan project team developed a tool
to describe and measure community capacity in the
Local Area Plans. Semi-structured interviews were
conducted with members from all eight groups and
the questions were based on the tool developed.
Respondents generally felt that they were proud of
their efforts in developing and implementing their
plans, and that their skills and confidence had grown
as a result of the process. Each group discussed the
opportunities Local Area Planning provided them
to nurture leaders within their communities and
were positive about their ability to move forward
and continue implementation of their plans into the
future. Such a response was viewed as a real success
of the project, particularly given the relatively short
timeframes, with further work planned on evaluating
these changes into the future.
PROGRAM REPORTS
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