Logan Northern Australia Water Scheme

In 1991 Logan, a large-scale irrigation industry specialist, drawing on an idea of Ernie Bridge of the mid-1980s for a pipeline from the Ord River dam overland through the Great Sandy Desert to Perth, embarked on a study tour to explore the development opportunities of the extensive water resources of the northern zones of Western Australia, the Northern Territory and Queensland. After extensive research, he selected the West Kimberley region of Western Australia as the most suitable area due to its dry-season climate, water storage capability and ideal soil type and for the advantages of a project there: economies of scale, environmental sustainability, and proximity to port facilities and export markets. The plan involved three dam sites on the Martuwarra Fitzroy River - at Dimond Gorge, the Margaret River Gorge and on the Leopold River.^[1] No environmental studies were undertaken to understand the impacts on the river system. The proposal involved bulldozing 225,000 hectares of tropical savannah.

Logan formed a joint venture with Lend Lease–Logan of Kimberley Water Services and, following a positive feasibility study of the canal design concept by Lend Lease, submitted the irrigation and canal scheme as a fully funded development proposal to Western Australian Premier Carmen Lawrence and Water Resources Minister Ernie Bridge as a solution to water shortages in Perth and the Pilbara and as the basis of a large-scale, integrated irrigation industry, initially in cotton production, for the vast Kimberley region centred on Broome, employing a projected 1,300 Aboriginal people.

Following a change of government, the canal component of the scheme was rejected by the incoming Premier, Richard Court, who considered Perth did not have a water problem. However, his government undertook to support, through a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) issued under the authority of Resources Minister Colin Barnett, Logan's commercially funded WAI West Kimberley Irrigation Project, designed to utilise the extensive flood flows of the Fitzroy River. WAI’s MOU included a groundwater investigation in the La Grange area south of Broome on Karajarri Country to grow crops like GM Cotton. When the licence expired in 2004, WAI needed permission from the Karajarri people to continue investigations. WAI were unable to negotiate access to the native title land for exploratory drilling, and did not undertake a detailed hydrogeological study due to the objections of Karajarri people.^[2]

Subsequently, in 2005, in a contract now expired, WAI joined with infrastructure company Tenix, to present the canal project to political leaders including Colin Barnett,^[3] who as opposition leader used the proposal as part of his unsuccessful 2005 state election campaign.^[4] He later admitted the plan was a mistake and cost him the 2005 WA State election^[5]He ruled it out when campaigning for the 2008^[6] election but on 2 August 2012, after an election which brought him to the position of Premier and following Perth's driest July on record, Barnett raised the proposal again, saying that "from a technical or engineering point of view, it’s not difficult to do", as The Australian reported under the headline ‘Barnett’s waterway back on agenda’.^[7] The plan for water from the North was finally killed off in 2016 'Report kills off Colin’s canal idea' by the WA government's Department of Water, the report said "..taking supplies from “distant locations” is unaffordable."^[8]

The Kimberley region, virtually undeveloped, contains an internationally significant water resource. The Fitzroy River, its catchments fed by variable tropical rainfall, is reported by government to deliver 9,000 gigalitres of mean annual flow,^[9] and at peak floods is one of the largest rivers in Australia, when it has been reported to discharge up to 30,000 cubic metres per second into King Sound of the Buccaneer Archipelago of the Timor Sea. The water required for the irrigation and canal projects would be obtained by harvesting 3,400 gigalitres (38%) of the mean annual flow, leaving 5,500 gigalitres (62%) of unused water to discharge nearby into the sea. These volumes have been found to be unrealistic given that the lowest flow at Fitzroy Crossing was 363 gigalitres.^[10] Further, no studies have been done to assess the environmental impact of extracting the proposed amount of water.

The WAI West Kimberley Irrigation Project and Kimberley to Perth Canal offer a successful conclusion to the long search to achieve the social, economically viable and sustainable development of the extensive but unutilised land and water resources of northern Australia, creating a new food bowl and fibre industry for both Australian and Asian markets. The responsible development of this one location, the West Kimberley region of the Fitzroy River, with the provision of a permanent urban and industrial water supply for the Western Australian community, has the potential to serve as a basis for replication, a demonstration that such projects are achievable in Australia's north.