A 10-year plan to return water to floodplains and wetlands along the Murray Darling Basin should give irrigators time to adjust, but environmentalists say it's already a decade behind.
The Murray Darling Basin Authority's Constraints Relaxation Implementation Roadmap, released on Wednesday, offers state and federal governments a way forward to achieve the Basin Plan of returning 3200 gigalitres of annual water entitlements back to Australia's biggest river system.
So far the scheme has returned 2200 gigalitres, but recent reports have shown decades of policy reform have scarcely improved flows, Indigenous water entitlements or drinking water quality for nearby communities.
The roadmap calls for a raft of measures and projects, including better integration between the Commonwealth and Basin state governments, changes to river management and improved monitoring.
The plan's success would depend on keeping traditional owners, land owners and communities at the heart of discussions and projects, the authority's chief executive Andrew McConville said.
"There's not a person, whether it be a community, First Nation or government, that doesn't recognise the importance of addressing constraints," Mr McConville told AAP.
"It's about ensuring that every gigalitre of water that we've recovered, you're getting that maximum environment or social economic impact from it."
But even in an ideal world, balancing the needs of the river's millions of users isn't so simple.
By the Murray River in Victoria's Murrabit, third-generation farmer and irrigator Andrew Leahy said water recovery had effectively halved the number of dairy farms in the area and student numbers at the local high school had plunged from 1000 to 200.
"No one wants to see the environment in disrepair, but we want to see outcomes, not a (target) volume of water," Mr Leahy told AAP.
The roadmap's decade-long implementation time frame gives farmers time to adjust, but environmentalists warned efforts were moving too slowly.
“We’ve all been waiting 10 years for these projects that will deliver more water to wetlands and floodplains so that fish and birds can breed, river red gums can get a regular drink and the Murray Darling can start being restored to health." Murray-Darling Conservation Alliance national director Craig Wilkins said.
The federal environment department said it would carefully consider the roadmap and work with Basin governments on steps forward in the new year.
The statement was echoed by water ministers in NSW and South Australia, but AAP did not receive a response from the Victorian government.
