The Murray and Darling rivers meet at Wentworth in NSW. Credit:Justin McManus Enter the engineers, whose dams and locks tamed the bulk of flows in the basin's 23 main river valleys. And then, after a century of sporadic regulation, the hydrologists and bureaucrats descended to wind back excessive extraction to save the health of the over-tapped rivers. "We're taking 20 per cent of the water that had been legally obtained by all the irrigators, and in a seven-year period," said Phillip Glyde, the chief executive of the Murray-Darling Basin Authority charged with overseeing the $13 billion river rescue plan. "We're trying to move as quickly as we can without totally destroying towns," Glyde told Fairfax Media, adding that progress to reverse ecological damage – water bird populations have dropped two-thirds from 1980s levels – has been patchy since the plan's start in 2012. "It's better, but is it significantly better at a basin scale? No," he says. Some 2000 of 2750 gigalitres of the water to bought back for environmental uses as been secured so far.

River flows from the basin are highly variable. Credit:Louie Douvis 'Shocked and rocked' Evidence revealed by ABC's Four Corners on Monday indicated well-heeled irrigators have been extracting billions of litres to water cotton farms, with apparent encouragement by NSW bureaucrats. Ian Hunter, who as Water Minister for parched South Australia is arguably the most anxious to see upstream states toe the line, says his faith in the integrity of the basin plan has been "shocked and rocked". He's calling for a judicial inquiry because he doesn't trust NSW's investigation with its limited terms of reference and powers to extract documents and call witnesses. Water bird populations have dropped two-thirds from 1980s levels. Credit:Justin McManus

Labor's federal water spokesman, Tony Burke, who launched the plan during the Gillard government has also lodged a formal request for an audit to the National Audit Office. Also draining confidence have been revelations NSW has undertaken only perfunctory enforcement of the state's 130,000-odd water licences. ​Former compliance officers – often former police picked for their ability to detect and investigate criminal behaviour – have been frustrated as cases ripe for prosecution failed to proceed and expert teams were dismantled. Regulators' resolve across the basin may be tested in the months ahead as the region appears to be headed for an extended dry period. Credit:Peter Braig NSW boasts dozens of compliance staff but only a handful of them conduct on-the-ground, surprise inspections.

'Make money' Jamie Morgan, former head of the Department of Primary Industry's former Strategic Investigations Unit until early this year, says there was "no appetite for compliance any more".



He cites the transfer of responsibilities to state-owned WaterNSW, a corporation. "They are now the poacher and gamekeeper," Morgan says. "The charter is to make money, not to spend money to prosecute people they are making money from." Morgan's unit of 12 officers was disbanded soon after it began to target the Barwon-Darling region of north-west NSW, which even the authority views as a frontier zone compared with the more tightly regulated southern basin. His ability to issue stop-work notices for water users suspected of breaching their licences - an action he had performed hundreds of times in few years [check time] - was abruptly terminated by David Harris, his new boss at WaterNSW last September. New notices would need Mr Harris's "express written consent", he said. Fairfax sought an explanation for the change from WaterNSW.



A separate team of nine investigators that feed Morgan's group, was wound up when a $17 million, five-year federal subsidy – under the National Framework for Compliance and Enforcement Systems for Water Resource Management – ended. "Most of the states weren't fair dinkum on regulation," a former member of that team says.



Regulators' resolve across the basin – taking in Queensland, NSW, Victoria, SA and the ACT – may be tested in the months ahead as the region appears to be headed for an extended dry period.

June was the basin's driest since 1986 - and the fourth driest on record - and July's rains have been similarly poor and the outlook for the next three months also points to below-average rainfall for the region. (See Bureau of Meteorology chart below showing June 1- July 26 rainfall for the basin - outlined in black.) "When it dries out, the incentives to steal water go through the roof," the ex-investigator says. The shorter term fluctuations aside, the basin plan does not little to account for climate change. The authority's Glyde says the region is likely to get hotter but the impacts on rainfall are unclear - the northern region may get more rain and the southern areas less.

"Sooner or later we'll be precise enough [to predict local climate change impacts] and we'll have to bring forward the case for making changes to the plan," he said." Winding back oversight Meanwhile, federal oversight has also been systematically wound back. The Sustainable Rivers Audit, which in 2010 found all but two of the basin rivers to be in a poor to extremely poor state, was disbanded after the Coalition government in NSW cut funding. In 2015, the Abbott government also scrapped the National Water Commission that had been charged with auditing the basin plan. A year later, Barnaby Joyce as deputy prime minister deftly used the turmoil of Malcolm Turnbull's ousting of Abbott as PM to snatch control of water policy as his price for Coalition peace. Joyce reminded his constituents what was at stake for them on Wednesday, telling a pub gathering in the Victorian irrigating centre of Shepparton: "We've taken water and put it back into [the agriculture ministry] so we can look after you and make sure we don't have the greenies running the show, basically sending you out the back door."

Moreover, the Four Corners program was a fix: "You know what's [the Four Corners program is] all about - it's about them trying to take water off you, [to] paint a calamity," he said. "A calamity, for which the solution is that they're going take more water off you, and shut more of your towns down." Loading Glyde, the authority's head, worries about calls for a major pause in the plan, not due for full review until 2024. "It's really quite dangerous – starting again is not an option," he says. "We're not going to get that bipartisan commitment that locks everybody in."