The town of Griffith on the Murrumbidgee river, and the centre of the Riverina district, is a major wine, rice and fruit-growing area.

It was also ground zero when it came to opposition to the Murray-Darling basin plan. In 2010, irrigators in Griffith burned copies of the plan in the street and, in 2012, as the plan came into force, there were more wild protests.

So far, 2,000GL of water has been bought back for the environment, about 76% of the current 2,750GL under the plan. In the Murray catchment, about 27% of water entitlements were bought by the commonwealth.

Young men burn copies of the guide to the Murray-Darling basin plan in the carpark outside the Murray-Darling Basin Authority meeting in Griffith in 2010. Photograph: Gabrielle Dunlevy/AAP

Even as late as 2016 the irrigator lobby group Speak Up was calling on the federal government to stop the plan in its tracks.

“We think they’ve got enough water to achieve what they want to,” Speak Up spokeswoman and Deniliquin rice farmer Shelley Scoullar said.

But modelling by consulting group Marsden Jacobs for the federal agriculture department, released in December last year, found “that the economic effect of the purchase [buyback] program on the MIA [Murrumbidgee irrigation area] is very small, if not neutral”.

This is because farmers received market prices for their water that they could then reinvest in other projects. The commonwealth government also poured $387m into water efficiency projects that further stimulated the local economy.

Marsden Jacobs calculated that, during the construction phase (2010-19), growth in the local economy would increase by an estimated $178m. The economy would then experience an ongoing net increase in real GDP of between $16m and $22m annually due to the ongoing influence of productivity gains.