"WaterNSW alleges that the defendants took water when the flow conditions did not permit it, and breached licence and approval conditions," the agency said. "The maximum penalty for each of these offences is $247,500." Legal action was also under way in the same court against Anthony, Frederick and Margaret Barlow for pumping during an embargo and for pumping while meter equipment were not working. Similar maximum penalties would apply, WaterNSW said. The government was criticised in November by the Matthews Report into water mismanagement in NSW for the lack of action to address allegations aired by ABC's Four Corners four months earlier. WaterNSW said "completing the necessary investigations and determining the appropriate regulatory response within these parameters takes time". Loading

In a separate statement, Niall Blair, NSW's Regional Water Minister, said the government was "committed to doing all we can to protect one of our most valuable resources and making sure it is looked after responsibly and fairly by all". 'Significant degree' The announcement of the court action came as the Ombudsman released an unusual corrective report prompted by its discovery the government provided misleading figures on its water compliance issues to an earlier investigation. WaterNSW officials had given the Ombudsman information that individual enforcement actions had shown a "significant increase" between 1 July 2016 and 3 November 2017. That claim, though, triggered "complaints and information from a number of current and former staff of WaterNSW" who said there had been no referrals for prosecutions and no penalty infringement notices issued during the period.

The initial submission had claimed 12 prosecutions and 105 infringement notices. All up, the November report's total of 674 enforcement outcomes were cut to less than a third, or 193, in the corrected report. The Ombudsman's "Correcting the record" report noted Mr Blair quoted the incorrect figures in Parliament on 15 November last year. The Ombudsman Michael Barne said the evidence suggested senior WaterNSW executives had failed to give "sufficiently careful consideration" to the statistics they provided. However, the report said the evidence did not indicate the executives had "wilfully" misled. 'Misleading'

Labor MPs used question time in the state's upper house this week to accuse Mr Blair of misleading Parliament by using the false compliance figures. Mr Minns said the government had "done nothing but play politics for six months and only when every charge against [Mr Blair's] tenure as water minister has proven to be completely correct [he] reluctantly announces that prosecutions have begun. “This is exactly why no one has any confidence in the National Party," Mr Minns said. "They have misled the Parliament, closed down investigations and lied to the Ombudsman. It’s time for the minister to lose the water portfolio.” Loading A spokeswoman for Mr Blair said the minister would not be issuing a statement on the Ombudsman's report.

She said Mr Minns should be directing his efforts to his federal counterparts to "stop playing political games with the Murray-Darling Basin Plan". "The Basin Plan is now on the scrap heap because Labor put politics ahead of robust science and this government’s comprehensive response to fix water compliance and enforcement issues in NSW," she said. 'Bone dry' The NSW government has threatened to pull out of the $13 billion Basin Plan after the Senate last month voted against a plan to reduce the environmental water savings target of the northern basin by 70 billion litres a year to 320 billion litres. NSW accounts for about half the total extraction from the Murray-Darling Basin.

Much of the Darling River below Bourke is facing blue-green algal outbreaks just as the Murray Darling Basin Authority's own scientists have identified over-extraction as making low flow periods worse. Jeremy Buckingham, the Greens water spokesman, described Thursday's disclosure of the legal action as a "smokescreen" aimed at concealing the "damning" Ombudsman's report. "The government was dragged kicking and screaming into actually enforcing water laws," Mr Buckingham said. “Water theft has real world consequences for the environment and downstream communities," he said. "The Darling River is bone dry or suffering blue-green algae breakouts because of over extraction by upstream irrigators."

For its part, WaterNSW said it would "implement more rigorous internal processes to ensure that information provided to regulatory authorities is accurate".

“We hold ourselves to a high standard and while it is true that this error occurred at a time

when we were providing a high volume of information to multiple inquiries, it was an error

nonetheless,” David Harris, chief executive of WaterNSW said. Peter Harris, the irrigator, confirmed he had received a summons issued by Water NSW to

appear in the Land and Environment Court of NSW, and said no evidence had been served. “We look forward to an opportunity to vigorously defend these allegations in a legitimately constituted forum where the rule of law applies," Mr Harris said in a statement. “While these allegations relate to events that happened more than 21 months ago, this is the first time Water NSW has raised this matter with us," he said, adding that the prosecution appeared to cover issues raised in the same court last year in proceedings commenced by the Inland Rivers Network. New embargo

In addition to all the other river action on Thursday, the NSW government issued an embargo on extracting water flowing south along the Barwon-Darling from the heavy rainfall over central Queensland. Mr Buckingham welcomed the move by Mr Blair, saying it should ensure flows will at least reach Bourke weir pool. “It’s very concerning that the Minister does not expect water to reach further downstream than the Bourke weir," he said. "How much of this rain event will be pumped into the irrigation dams around St George and at Cubbie Station in Queensland?"