Farmer buys amphibious, eight-wheeled vehicle after he says nearby hydro scheme flooded his property

Farmer John Flannery’s amphibious, eight-wheeled all-terrain vehicle is an unusual sight in his pocket of rural Tasmania near Ulverstone.

“It’s basically a boat on wheels,” he said.

It is not something he had expected to need, but it is a vehicle he could not do without on his South Nietta property.

That is because of years of widespread flooding on his and his neighbours’ farms that has left soggy pastures, killed trees and drowned animals.

More than a year ago, Mr Flannery and some of his neighbours successfully lobbied the state government to investigate what they believed caused the flooding — a small, family-owned hydro-electric scheme opened in 2014.

In 2016, the hydro scheme’s licence was expanded to allow it to pump 2,360 Olympic swimming pools of water from one stream into another that runs about 3 kilometres through their collective properties.

The ABC understands the scheme has not been pumping the full amount of water for several years.

The ABC does not suggest wrongdoing by the owners, who have acted in accordance with their licence.

Following years of complaints and back and forth with various government figures, questions in parliament and an ABC investigation, the scheme was halted in 2023 while the claims were investigated.

Tasmania’s Department of Natural Resources and Environment says it is currently monitoring the situation, and assured that pumping would not restart until a new operating protocol was in place.

But the farmers are anxious.

Flooded farmers call for a complete stop

“We lost a bull there,” Mr Flannery said, sitting in his amphibious vehicle and pointing to a paddock filled with glyceria.

Glyceria maxima is described as a “troublesome” waterway weed by the state’s Department of Natural Resources and Environment (NRE), and is known to form vast floating mats.

Mr Flannery likened the phenomenon to an icy lake, saying he had lost cattle after they fell through the dense mats and drowned.

“The problem is … how do you get a machine into what is effectively a swamp to clear it out?” he asked.

“It’s a bit of a mission impossible.

“The only way I can see is that pumping needs to stop entirely, and this place needs probably a number of years to dry out.”

Upstream, farmer Donald Bonney has taken advantage of the pumping pause to clear the weeds out from a section of the rivulet running though his land, as well as deepen the channel.

He said the dry season and the lack of water had allowed him to reclaim some land, but that uncertainty over the future of the hydro scheme had left him hesitant to sow anything.

“There’s probably about 10 acres of land there that I can get in and plough,” he said.

“But I’m waiting to find out when the pumping restarts.”

Mr Bonney estimated the flooding had cost him about $100,000 in the loss of productive land and the expense of cleaning up the creek.

So, whose fault is it?

In a 2023 environmental report commissioned by NRE and seen by the ABC, the author suggested the flooding was likely the fault of successive landowners.

“The decades-old lack of weed management and drainage maintenance by all landowners/managers is probably the primary cause of the flooding and dieback of forest on the margins,” the report read.

When asked if this was also the position of the department, an NRE spokesperson did not respond.

Asked to confirm how much it had spent on the investigation process, a department spokesperson said they were unable to provide that information before the deadline.

They did confirm the department had met with the landowners several times to discuss their concerns.

“NRE Tas has installed monitoring sites within New Year Plain to assess water levels in the area and this monitoring is ongoing,” they said.

“This monitoring will inform an operating protocol with Nietta Hydro to establish rules for when transfers … can occur. Transfers … will not recommence until the operating protocol is in place.”

In a letter dated November 25, Tasmanian Premier Jeremy Rockliff told the farmers “neither the Tasmanian government nor the NRE regards the South Nietta landholders as being at fault”.

“The (2023) report noted that the presence of the weed species Glyceria maxima was likely to exacerbate the extent of flooding in the flood plain, and weed management is a landholder responsibility,” he wrote.

Taking matters into their own hands

In the meantime, the farmers, with the help of their friend and former scientist John Thompson, have engaged the services of Dr John Tilleard, an environmental engineer with 50 years of experience in hydrology, hydraulics and geomorphology of rivers and streams to perform his own review.

Dr Tilleard reviewed the recent environmental report, an initial report that assessed the potential impact of the water transfer, and data provided by Mr Thompson.

He determined that neither report had adequately assessed the impact of the extra water running through the system, and that the additional water flowing through the rivulet had led to increased flooding and waterlogging in the area.

“Any resumption of operation … will lead to ongoing property damage,” he wrote.

The NRE spokesperson said the department was considering Dr Tilleard’s findings.

Mr Thompson said the government needed to admit it never should have allowed the water transfer.

“This is six years of continuous damage,” he claimed.

“The department has been stonewalling and now gaslighting the farmers, telling them it’s their fault.

“They made a mistake, and government needs to fess up and acknowledge that they created this.

“The people that caused this was not the farmers, not Nietta Hydro because they have a licence to do this, but the government.”