Riverina farmers 'confused' by NSW Government water allocation as dam levels strong

Riverina farmers have called for an urgent rethink of the way water allocations are made in the region.

Now is the critical time for planting rice, but many farmers on general security allocations are frustrated by the limited amounts of water they are receiving.

Without certainty in the amount of water they will have, they do not know how much to plant.

Allocations increased today by 3 per cent to a total of 40 per cent but Griffith rice grower Chint Quarisa is frustrated.

"The dams are somewhere between 65 and 80 per cent full and last year they were even more than that and here we have a 40 per cent allocation announcement," he said.

"I'm very confused. What do the bureaucrats in Sydney want us to do?"

Mr Quarisa has 360 acres to plant rice in, but he is having to seriously reconsider how much he will sow this year.

"The market out there needs the rice and wants it and we're not getting the water to grow it when it's up there in the mountains," he said.

It is a view shared by the Griffith City Council.

"Last year it's estimated that the reduction in water cost this community between $55 million and $60 million [and] the way we're headed it's going to have the same effect this coming year," the town's mayor, John Dal Broi, said.

"Traditionally, farmers, if they've got a dollar they'll spend it in the community.

"But at the moment they are [holding their money] because they haven't got any confidence in the future.

"The smaller farmer, the famed [figure] that built this area, is going to start to suffer and wither and I don't know what's going to happen - I don't like to think about it."

Over-allocation 'does not end well', minister says

The New South Wales Office of Water is making the conservative allocations to avoid a repeat of the late 2000s, when some allocations had to be revoked.

"One of the issues that you do not want to face as a government ... is over-allocating water to farmers, so that farmers are making decisions about water they might not necessarily receive," NSW Water Minister Kevin Humphries said.

"We've had instances of that in the past and I can tell you it does not end well.

"You end up with failed crops and it usually ends up in litigation as well."

Griffith farmer and Mirrool Ricegrowers' Association branch president Hayden Cudmore remembers it all too well.

"It wasn't great for business," he said.

"Crops had to be turned off and died; people had signed grain contracts on the back of announced allocations.

"It was a very expensive process for people to go through to have allocations revoked."

He said it was important to understand the process and he accepted the current limits.

"I'm comfortable where things are at at the moment," he said.

"Of course I'd like more water, we'd all like more water, but the reality is we haven't had the inflows to announce that water."

Carryover plan 'has to be looked at', council says

The Griffith City Council said much of the confusion was caused by carryover.

Carryover allows general security irrigators that do not use all of their allocation to keep 30 per cent until next year, when it needs to be factored in when looking at dam levels.

"[Farmers] are telling me 'look, there's heaps of snowfall, there is rainfall, the dams - one's at 80 per cent, the other's at nearly 70 per cent - and we've only got [a low] allocation'," he said.

"With that sort of water in the dams at present, they're frightened for the future.

"This whole issue of allocation, of carryover water, has to be looked at."

But the Minister is unlikely to make any changes, telling the ABC "the balance is there in the short-to-medium term".

"You're always going to get people agitating for more water, depending on the class of water that they're holding - that's nothing new," he said.

"There are a few things that we can do into the future in the Murrumbidgee which might help in terms of water delivery [such as] an additional water storage location back up the system."