The Ord Land and Water Management Plan has been developed with every community member having the opportunity to be involved and have input. It has been interesting to see people with such diverse opinions and beliefs respecting each other so they could work together to set realistic goals and develop a range of workable strategies.
"We need to develop a gentleness and respect towards the use of our natural resources of our area; we cannot continue 'to bang them about'. We have to look at the whole and not just parts and develop ways that don’t just treat the symptoms but genuinely meet the challenges.
We can be World Leaders and be proud of it”.
Tim Croot
Chairman of the Steering Committee, 2000
The Imperative
The wise use of the land and water of the Ord has become an imperative driven by increasing awareness of the impacts of current uses on ground water and the on the quality of the Ord River itself. We have been lucky as a community that these resources are still in reasonable order and that we have the time to address the resource management challenges associated with our use of them. There is a wide range of land and water management issues to be addressed and all those involved have responsibilities to address some of those issues.
Our Approach
Our approach was to empower the community to identify the issues it saw as important to the long term wise use of the land and water that make up the natural resources of the Ord River Irrigation Area and surrounding riverine systems. The Project was conducted in a number of stages from an initial information and communication phase through to the implementation of the recommendations.
Phase 1: Information transfer and awareness building using a number of media forms, central to which was a regular newsletter that contained brief stimulating articles associated with land and water management. This phase was completed by the election of a steering committee to oversee the rest of the project.
Phase 2: Identification of the management issues through extensive consultation with industry, community and other interest groups culminating in the formation of four Local Action Groups made up of interested community members with a wide range of interests.
Phase 3: The setting of goals and development of strategies to address the issues identified during phase 2. This Plan marks the end of this phase.
Phase 4: The implementation of the plan using structures established by the community through the work of the Local Action Groups. These structures establish the framework for the development of the partnerships between Industry the Community and Government Agencies that will be necessary to successfully implement the plan.
- This Board should be provided with resources to enable it to function and to employ a full time coordinator.
- This Board would consist of six elected community members.
- They would have the power to coopt two additional full time members if they considered particular groups within the community were under represented.
- These six to eight members would then form the full time membership of the board.
- Relevant experts would be brought in to help make decisions on particular aspects of the plan implementation.
- These experts would function as full members of the board during the deliberations within their field of expertise.
- Only residents of the Shire of Wyndham East Kimberley would be eligible to serve as community board members.
- Upon leaving the Shire the member’s position on the Board would be deemed to become vacant.
- The inaugural board would be responsible for deciding on their operating rules, succession plan, values, vision and goals while overseeing the appointment and management of a project coordinator
- They would be charged with implementing the recommendations contained within the Land and Water Management Plan and for ensuring an ongoing commitment to improving management of land and water in the ORIA.
This land and water management plan is based on extensive community consultation and involvement over a period of three years. We have assumed that all involved and interested parties are committed to ensuring that land and water management improves throughout the irrigation area. For improvement to actually happen it will be necessary for all those involved in using land and water resources to change what they are currently doing. Implementing the plan will commit individuals, groups, organisations and agencies to actions in the short, medium and long term. All those involved will incur some costs, at least in the short term, before the benefits of improved management begin to flow. Some of the benefits will result in improved returns or reduced costs directly to users, while other benefits will be more of a community nature for which values are harder to establish.
Many of the improvements to management that could be made now, based on current knowledge, are either being implemented by users or tested under Ord conditions prior to widespread implementation. For example:laser levelling of irrigation fields; integrated Pest Management in cotton and horticulture; and polyacrylamide application to improve irrigation efficiency and reduce soil loss.
A number of other problems have been addressed during the term of this study. Horticulturists have developed a code of practice for spraying Endosulfan, the Ord Sugar Mill has removed its effluent from the irrigation channel, and de-watering bores have been tested for their ability to contribute to the management of rising ground water.
Some management changes will be necessary to avoid major land and water management problems in the future for which there are no clearly obvious inancial returns, at least in the short to medium term. The extent, and even the nature, of some of these problems can not yet be clearly defined, but the trends are convincing that without action land and/or water quality will be reduced in future. In addition; there are a suite of issues for which improved management methods have either not yet been devised or for which tests of applicability for the Ord have not yet been carried out.
The challenge is to continue to measure the impacts of our use of land and water in ways that enable new and improved management strategies to be developed into the future.
There is a wide range of land and water management issues to be addressed and all those involved have responsibilities to address some of those issues. Some will fall clearly into particular groups, agency or individual areas of responsibility, but largely real progress will only be made if there are true and effective partnerships formed to address each issue constructively. These partnerships will need to be based on a recognition of what each party can achieve, the skills that each party has, the ability of each party to fund its share and a willingness to trust and respect each other. Each partner is charged with the responsibility to do the best they can to achieve the improvements required.
- This Board would consist of six elected community members.
- They would have the power to coopt two additional full time members if they considered particular groups within the community were under represented.
- These six to eight members would then form the full time membership of the board.
- Relevant experts would be brought in to help make decisions on particular aspects of the plan implementation.
- These experts would function as full members of the board during the deliberations within their field of expertise.
- Only residents of the Shire of Wyndham East Kimberley would be eligible to serve as community board members.
- Upon leaving the Shire the member’s position on the Board would be deemed to become vacant.
- The inaugural board would be responsible for deciding on their operating rules, succession plan, values, vision and goals while overseeing the appointment and management of a project coordinator.
- They would be charged with implementing the recommendations contained within the Land and Water Management Plan and for ensuring an ongoing commitment to improving management of land and water in the ORIA.