The prolonged drought has prompted 60 farmers in south-west New South Wales to offer their irrigation entitlements to the Federal Government under its buyback program.

They are offering to sell about 42,000 megalitres of water entitlements along irrigation channels in the Wakool area west of Deniliquin.

The estimated sale price is between $50 million to $60 million.

Murray Irrigation Limited has taken the offer to the Federal Government and its chairman, Stewart Ellis, says some of the sellers may retire rather than continue farming without water.

“They’ve assessed their own situations and given the tough years of drought and low water allocations, we’ve had two years of zero and then a 9 and now a 22 per cent allocation this year, so they’ve been particularly tough years on the farm,” he said.

“They’ve come forward on a voluntary basis, put forward their own proposal which has been assessed by Murray Irrigation and then put together into a proposal and taken to the Commonwealth Government for consideration.

“What the people are looking for is something over and above the market price of water entitlements.

“They’re not just looking at selling all of their water.

“They’re actually selling all of their water and disconnecting their farms permanently from a connection to our channel system, so they will truly be dryland farms in the future if this proposal is accepted.”

Mr Ellis says the sale would mean the closure of more than 100 kilometres of channels.

“The proposal is that the infrastructure like within Murray Irrigation’s channel system, the bridges, culverts, regulators, would be removed and the channels actually filled in, so it is a physical disconnection from the system,” he said.

“We would say this type of buyback is a more strategic approach because all of these schemes that have come forward for closure are either on the end of channel systems or on the end of spur channels, so there’s no-one actually irrigating on the channel below them so we can actually close down that section of channel, so in effect this type of buyback should be helping the rest of remaining irrigators because it leaves Murray irrigators with a smaller footprint and a more efficient delivery system as a result.

“We’re expecting something back from the Government this week and then we have a meeting arranged with these proponents on the 12th of April, so whatever the offer that comes from the Government will be passed onto the people, to the proponents of these shutdowns.

“Then we’ve got this meeting arranged on the 12th to ascertain how many of them want to be part of the deal and whether we’ve got a deal going forward.”