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What is the Reconnecting River Country Program, and what do you need to do

By Cai Holroyd

What is the Reconnecting River Country Program, and what do you need to do

The Reconnecting River Country Program is a tenet of the Murray-Darling Basin Plan initiative, and aims to connect more rivers to wetlands and floodplains to help create healthier river systems.

Barriers that prevent the flow of water can include low-lying levees or weirs, policy barriers and operational restrictions such as river operation guidelines.

The program is an effort to remove some of those constraints, and one of the steps will be negotiating with landowners to buy flood easements along the Murrumbidgee between Darlington Point and Balranald.

The easements would allow greater water flow across private land, up to 40,000 megalitres per day by 2031.

Cater and Blumer Solicitors will be hosting an information session on September 22 for riverside landowners to help further explain the potential impacts of the negotiations, how they'll work and how landowners can best engage in the process.

Solicitor Bobbie Pannowitz explained that they wanted to ensure landowners understood their rights and were in the best position possible once negotiations begin.

"The main thing will be how to engage with the Department. They've identified the most impacted landowners between Darlington Point and Balranald, they'll start making contact with those landowners and they'll be invited to negotiate," she said.

"Once that happens, they have 28 days to accept the offer to negotiate and then 12 months to negotiate."

Ms Pannowitz explained that the easements would run in perpetuity, staying with the land

Flows won't commence until 2031, but negotiations are beginning now.

The session will start at 2pm on September 22, offering a chance for landowners to ask any questions they have about the process. Registrations are required.

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