DEAR News Of The Area,

THE following letter is in response to comments from Gurmesh Singh and Michael Kemp on Coastal Harvestable Water Rights.

Mark Twain famously said: “There are lies, damned lies and statistics.”

It was a shrewd and perceptive observation of how statistics can be used to muddy the waters, distract attention or support a poor argument.

That quote came to mind when I read the article in last week’s NOTA on Coastal Harvestable Water Rights.

Nothing muddies the water more effectively than an irrelevant statistic.

Gurmesh Singh may be correct when he says that 30 percent of runoff only equates to two and a half percent of the water that falls on a property. Correct, but not relevant.

The real issue is not the percentage of rainfall but the amount of runoff that is withheld from our streams, rivers and ultimately the Solitary Islands Marine Park.

That runoff is critical to the health of those waterways and the marine life they nurture. That’s why we measure and control runoff, not total rainfall.

Coastal streams do demonstrably benefit from higher rainfall than inland waterways.

However, the health of the ecosystem those streams support depends on that higher rainfall.

It is both simplistic and wrong to say that we can capture and store three times as much in coastal systems without a negative impact.

That runoff is critical to a complex and important part of the place we call home.

As for the science, it was right there in the former NSW Government’s analysis of the move to 30 percent harvestable water rights.

The Government itself said that there will be more frequent periods of no or low river flow and reduced flushing as a result of the increase in harvestable water and it noted the negative impact that would have on water quality.

It also specifically noted that increased harvestable rights could also result in Woolgoolga Lake being open to the sea less frequently and for a shorter amount of time, a poor outcome for so many people in Woolgoolga.

There is room for debate about land use and water policy in our region, but let’s keep it real.

Irrelevant statistics don’t add value to a debate on water, just a lot of mud.

Regards,
Tony JUDGE,
Woolgoolga.