Mrs Dalton says changes to the management of dams and rivers in the past 20 years are reducing allocation reliability and negatively impacting the environment and staple food production.
The independent MP says dams are now conservatively run on a 1:100-year dry scenario.
“I believe you can be too cautious when it comes to managing storages and there is definitely a community risk prioritising full dams, particularly in wet years,” she says.
“The 2022 floods were undeniably exacerbated by full storages upstream from Kerang.
“Living in a land of drought and flooding rains, we need adaptive management to allow for flood mitigation in wet years and allocation preservation in drier ones.
“We have come a long way with the ability to forecast weather events and with improvements in technology, surely we can manage our dams and rivers better.”
Mrs Dalton says it is becoming increasingly difficult to get a reasonable allocation at the start of each season, because a lot of water stored in our dams is already accounted for.
She says, for example, Murrumbidgee general security allocations did not reach 100 per cent until February this year, despite the system being in flood for months and months.
“Those delays in allocation impact productivity and the longer they go on, the bigger the impact,” Mrs Dalton says.
“I believe we should all be advocating strongly for a feasibility study for this proposal along with investigating other storage opportunities.
“We need to prioritise nation-building infrastructure in this country and that includes an open and transparent conversation around dam management.”
