Copyright © 2023 by the author(s). Published here under license by the Resilience Alliance.

Ford, Z. E., S. Jackson, G. Bino, K. J. Brandis, and R. T. Kingsford. 2023. Scale, evidence, and community participation matter:
lessons in effective and legitimate adaptive governance from decision making for Menindee Lakes in Australia’s Murray-Darling
Basin. Ecology and Society 28(1):15. https://doi.org/10.5751/ES-13594-280115

Research, part of a Special Feature on Deeper Water: Exploring Barriers and Opportunities for the Emergence of Adaptive Water
Governance

Scale, evidence, and community participation matter: lessons in effective and

legitimate adaptive governance from decision making for Menindee Lakes in
Australia’s Murray-Darling Basin
Zoe E. Ford 1, Sue Jackson 2, Gilad Bino 3, Kate J. Brandis 3 and Richard T. Kingsford 3

ABSTRACT. Rivers and their interdependent human communities form social-ecologically complex systems that reflect basin scale
functionally but are often governed by spatially mismatched governance systems. Accounting for this complexity requires flexible
adaptive governance systems supported by legitimacy in decision-making processes. Meaningful community dialogue, information
exchange, transparency, and scientific rigor are essential to this process. We examined failings in the adaptive governance of the Menindee
Lakes system, a major Australian wetland system on the Barka/Darling River of the Murray-Darling Basin. Ecological sustainability
of the Menindee Lakes was a casualty of a top-down governance, driven by the New South Wales Government in pursuit of “water
savings” for the Murray-Darling Basin, a large scale, federally influenced region. We used quantitative and qualitative methods to
analyze long-term social-ecological impacts and stakeholder perceptions of adaptive governance. State and federal government agencies
failed basic processes of adaptive governance, ignoring local environmental sustainability in pursuit of basin scale objectives at great
cost to governments, communities, humans, and non-humans. This resulted in the development of an ineffective, technocratic solution
that lacked community input, leading to a complete loss of support by local communities, including traditional owners. We emphasize
the importance of elements of scale in adaptive governance projects, if such projects are going to be effective and legitimate with
consequences of coarse commitments to large spatial scale political and environmental objectives.
Key Words: adaptive governance, evidence, legitimacy, river flow, scale, waterbirds

INTRODUCTION
Rivers and their dependent ecosystems are complex social-
ecological systems. Because of their complexity, management of
these systems can often have unpredictable outcomes, which
disrupt function and feedback within the social-ecological system
(Berkes et al. 2000, Rogers et al. 2013). Freshwater ecosystems
support a disproportionate amount of biodiversity and ecosystem
services, often over large spatial scales (Strayer and Dudgeon
2010, Reid et al. 2019), making environmental governance of
these systems important for sustainable global resource use
patterns. They also face considerable uncertainty with global
climate change and increases in water resource development
degrading ecosystems (Folke et al. 2005, Junk et al. 2013,
Kingsford et al. 2016, Finlayson et al. 2017).
River basins depend on river flows often originating high up in a
river catchment or watershed, where water must sometimes travel
thousands of kilometers, usually traversing many different
management jurisdictions (Moss and Newig 2010). This can be a
challenge for water governance because this interconnectedness
contrasts with often discontinuous and nested political/
administrative levels of management (Molle 2009). This
interconnectedness produces a mismatch between geographical
and governance scales, often with top-down governance processes
or centralized decision making, which fail to provide effective
solutions for natural resource issues and coordinated governance
(Cash et al. 2006, Lemos and Agrawal 2006, Ekstrom and Young
2009, Guerrero et al. 2013). These mismatches can also occur
when the scale of spatial and temporal variability in a river system
(Walker et al. 1995, Scown et al. 2016) is not accounted for in
governance structures, especially with added uncertainty from
climate change (Cumming et al. 2006).
Only flexible governance systems can address coupled water and
human systems that evolve together over time and comprise highly
contextualized and dynamic human-water relationships
(Anderson et al. 2019), which are often multijurisdictional and
have unpredictable feedback between ecological and social
systems (Olsson et al. 2004, Chaffin et al. 2016). Adaptive
governance approaches attempt to manage this uncertainty and
complexity in social-ecological systems through learning-based
and flexible decision-making processes that aim to adaptively
negotiate and coordinate complex management (Dietz et al. 2003,
Folke et al. 2005). This often occurs across multiple levels of
organizations, involving government and non-government actors,
supported by systems that use rigorous scientific information and
encourage public learning to support evidence-based decision
making (Pahl-Wostl et al. 2007); however, adaptive governance
frequently fails to be implemented across all these levels of
governance (McLoughlin et al. 2020). These learning processes
enable the coordination and context for choosing between
management actions, monitoring their effects, and adjusting
actions as different components of the social-ecological system
change (Folke et al. 2005).
As such, adaptive governance requires trustworthy information
about the biophysical and associated social processes of river
systems relevant and in scale with management decision making
(Dietz et al. 2003, Vella et al. 2015). Administrative transparency
and the inclusion of community dialogue in decision making is
important for building trust in this information and establishing
legitimacy (Cosens and Williams 2012, Hogl et al. 2012, Jackson
2019), which is essential for creating effective solutions.
Trustworthy information for decision making depends on reliable
sources and scientific knowledge used with integrity in the

1
University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia, 2Australian Rivers Institute, Griffith University, Queensland, Australia, 3Centre for Ecosystem
Science, School of Biological, Earth and Environmental Sciences, UNSW, Sydney, Australia

development of publicly trusted policy (Colloff et al. 2021).
Transparency, free access, and documentation are essential to the
community for informed and meaningful engagement in decision
making (De Stefano et al. 2012). These factors are also important
for stakeholders to understand decisions and solutions so they
can influence them to benefit their own goals (Arnstein 1969,
Badenoch 2002). Moreover, the public's involvement in decision
making relies on good engagement to draw on their knowledge,
values, and perspectives for sound and rigorous outcomes
(Arnstein 1969, Jackson 2019).
This transparency and meaningful participation are important
components of effectiveness and legitimacy within adaptive
governance structures (Hogl et al. 2012, O’Donnell et al. 2019),
and gaps in their implementation can exacerbate the challenges
of achieving good governance in multijurisdictional and
multiscale systems (Badenoch 2002, Akamani and Wilson 2011).
This can also reduce trust, exacerbating preexisting conflict
among actors when there are competing viewpoints (Lien et al.
2021). Adaptive processes need to be sincere and understood by
communities for effective engagement (Allan and Watts 2018).
The Menindee Lakes
We examined elements of adaptive governance for current
decision making related to a major wetland system, the Menindee
Lakes (457 km² Water NSW 2022), which was a system of natural
lakes made into dams to store water (total storage volume of 1731
GL) by a large weir across the Darling River in the 1960s
(Appendix 1, Fig. A1.3). This water was delivered locally to the
nearby city of Broken Hill, to the lower part of the Darling River,
and to South Australia. The Darling River is in the Murray-
Darling Basin (MDB) of south-eastern Australia (Appendix 1,
Fig. A1.3) where geographic scale and institutional complexity
contribute to the difficulty of water management (Alexandra
2018). The basin is the largest in Australia, spanning one seventh
of the continent (1,059,000 km² Australian Bureau Statistics
2010) where 2.2 million people live, and surface water supplies
about 40% of Australia’s irrigated agricultural output (MDBA
2016). The region functions as a complex social-ecological
freshwater system and includes many recognized sites of high
biodiversity (Kingsford 2004, Bino et al. 2016). Freshwater
ecosystems in the Murray-Darling Basin have been in ecological
decline for decades (Walker 1985, Kingsford 2000, Pittock and
Finlayson 2011) primarily due to water resource development in
the basin that has had a strong impact on flow and flooding
regimes (Kingsford 2000). Because of this, the basin has been
subject to large-scale policy and law reform over the past 20 years,
much of it aimed at restoring environmentally sustainable levels
of water extraction and the delivery of water into the environment
through integrated basin management (MDBA 2012). The
recovery of these flows is an essential component of the
conservation of wetlands within the basin, however, many
wetlands have not received adequate environmental flows to
achieve expected ecological benefits (Chen et al. 2021).
The Murray-Darling Basin is characterized by considerable
institutional complexity in large part because of its federal
governance settings (Wallis and Ison 2011) with at least 6 major
policy contestants comprising 4 basin states (Queensland, New
South Wales, South Australia, and Victoria) and Australian
Capital Territory, the Australian Government, as well as 21
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regional natural resource management agencies (Pittock 2019).
State and territory governments are primarily responsible for land
and water management under the Australian constitution.
Institutional complexity has increased over recent decades with
the addition of new institutional arrangements that have
centralized decision-making, in step with the increasing diversity
of environmental problems (Wallis and Ison 2011). In 2007, the
Australian Government took overarching control of the
development of a restoration program under the 2007 Water Act,
implemented through the MDB Plan (Swirepik et al. 2016). This
centralized decision making to a larger basin scale of governance.
It was justified by an awareness of the environmental crises
exacerbated by the millennium drought of 2002-2010 and led to
increasingly technocratic solutions that in the region (Jackson and
Head 2020), failed to give sufficient attention to local
participation and community expectations for legitimacy
(O’Donnell et al. 2019).
The basin-wide restoration program began with the Australian
Government reducing water allocations via a sustainable
diversion limit (SDL) set for the entire MDB, with a target of
restoring 2750 GL a year to the river system. The primary
mechanism for achieving this was the “buying back” of water
diverted for irrigation. A secondary mechanism involved
investments in irrigation systems to increase water use efficiency
(Grafton and Wheeler 2018). Water was to be bought back by
willing sellers, primarily the irrigation industry. However, in 2015,
the current Australian Government decided that the economic
impact on the irrigation industry was too great and put a halt to
the buyback of water. Instead, they decided to reduce water
consumption through improved water efficiency. Subsequently
the Australian Government directed the state governments to
identify water efficiency projects that could “offset” reduced water
recovery targets by achieving “equivalent environmental
outcomes” with less recovered water (MDBA 2012).
The Menindee Lakes project was the largest water efficiency
project in the MDB, likely to deliver the greatest dividend in water
savings to meet the target under the MDB plan (MDBA 2017,
NSW Department of Natural Resources 2007). The project at
Menindee, which was expected to save 72 GL of water (NSW
Department of Primary Industries 2017), was administered as a
sustainable diversions adjustment mechanism (SDLAM) project
(hereinafter referred to as the Menindee Lakes project). This
project had a long history with the NSW Government (the 1990s),
in which more “efficient” management of the Menindee Lakes
was considered a priority for water recovery. It relied upon
engineering structures and changes to management operations to
reduce evaporative losses from the lakes (Bewsher Consulting
1994).
In 2018, the Menindee Lakes project was formally adopted by the
NSW Government to be completed by 2024, at an initial cost
estimate of $A151.8 million (NSW Department of Industry
2018). The associated cultural, ecological, and economic risks of
the project and the inadequacy of government community
consultation have caused considerable stakeholder concerns
(Australian Productivity Commission 2018, NBAN and
MLDRIN 2019, South Australian Government 2019, Jackson
and Head 2020). Key concerns were the lack of transparency,
flaws in the decision-making processes, and the likely local impact

and inequity in their distribution, although some questioned the
fundamental assumptions of the water savings objective. The
likelihood of the project’s failure jeopardized the project's
intended significant contribution to water usage efficiencies
(offset) under the MDB plan (MDBA 2020).
A major concern of the project area included a large portion of
Kinchega National Park (Appendix 1, Fig. A1.3), which was set
aside to protect biodiversity and cultural and recreational values,
including wetlands (NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service
1999). The lakes and a 400 km stretch of the Darling River also
sit within an area determined, in 2015, as native title under the
Barkandji people native title claim. The recognition this claim
brought is critical to the Barkandji people because the Darling
River, or Barka, (now referred as Barka/Darling River) and its
waters are central to their existence (Hartwig et al. 2018).
However, despite this legal recognition, water governance
structures in the region, and MDB more broadly, have
dispossessed Barkandji people of this water and continue to
marginalize them from decision-making processes such as water
sharing plans (O’Bryan 2019, Hartwig et al. 2022).
The New South Wales Government explicitly stated that the
project aimed to use an “adaptive and outcomes-based
governance approach” (NSW Department of Industry 2018:96).
Further, adaptive management and working effectively with local
communities were also stated as key principals to be applied to
environmental watering efforts under the Murray-Darling Basin
plan (MDBA 2012). These intentions provided us with an
opportunity to examine the effectiveness of this attempt at
adaptive governance. We investigated critical elements of adaptive
governance and decision making for the Menindee Lakes
SDLAM project, including scientific evidence, public learning,
and scales of decision making. We examined two biophysical
elements in relation to the ecological condition and selection of
Menindee Lakes for basin-scale water savings targets: (1) long-
term (1880-2019) rainfall and flows into the Menindee Lakes from
the Barka/Darling River and (2) the abundance and richness of
waterbirds at Menindee Lakes (1983-2019) in association with
flows. We also examined public learning through investigating the
perceptions of local communities dependent on the ecosystem,
about the ecological condition of the lakes, participation in
decision making, and future options for the Menindee Lakes and
the Barka/Darling River. We also examined the transparency,
accessibility, and composition of information sources for the
documented evidence that the government based their decision
making on in the business case for the Menindee Lakes project
(NSW Department of Industry 2018).
METHODS
Evidence based for decision making
Rainfall and flows
We investigated changes in flow and rainfall patterns to Menindee
Lakes given their reliance on water for flooding from upstream
on the Barka/Darling River, which is supplied by seven
catchments (Appendix 1, Fig. A1.1). Twenty-one rainfall stations
among these catchments provided long term (1890-2019) annual
cumulative rainfall data (BOM 2020). Data for each catchment
were averaged from all the rainfall stations within the catchment,
which allowed us to account for gaps in data availability among
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the rainfall stations (Appendix 1, Table A1.2). This averaged value
was then weighted to each catchments contribution (%), to annual
discharge for the Barka/Darling River (CSIRO 2008) to form a
rainfall index that reflected the different contributions of each
tributary river system to flows in the Barka/Darling:
Rainfall index = Annual cumulative rainfall for
catchment (mm) x Catchment contribution to flows for
the Barka/Darling (%)
We then modeled the relationship between this index and time for
each catchment separately and combined, using the built-in linear
model function in R (R Core Team 2021). This tested for
differences in rainfall in the tributary catchments into the Barka/
Darling and Menindee Lakes, again between three periods of
water resource development (pre-development 1881-1959,
increasing development 1960-2008, and water recovery
2009-2020; Table 1; Appendix 1, Table A1.1). This was done by
using estimated marginal means, using the “emmeans” package
in R (Lenth 2019) with pairwise comparisons of each catchment
among these three different periods of development (Appendix
1, Table A1.1).
We also investigated trends in annual river flows into the
Menindee Lakes (Gauge 425012; Water NSW 2020) in reference
to water resource development. Annual cumulative flow data were
available at Menindee Lakes (Gauge 425012; Water NSW 2020)
for the two latter periods but not for the pre-development phase.
For the pre-development phase (1890-1959), we modeled the
relationship between annual flow at the upstream (117 km) gauge
at Wilcannia (1880-2019; Gauge 425008; Water NSW 2020) and
Menindee Lakes, using a linear model, which had a strong and
positive association (R² = 0.97, p < 0.01; Appendix 1, Table A1.3,
Fig. A1.1). Data from both gauges were log transformed to
improve normality and homogeneity of variance to meet linear
model assumptions (Appendix 1, Fig. A1.2). This relationship
was then used with the inbuilt “predict” function in R to hindcast
flows for Menindee for the pre-development phase, using
untransformed Menindee (where available) and Wilcannia data.
This allowed us to track annual flows for Menindee over time and
test for differences among the three development periods
(Appendix 1, Table A1.1).
There are seven flow thresholds, which relate to different
ecological and hydrological responses, adapted from analyses for
the Barwon-Darling water sharing plan (NSW Department of
Primary Industries 2017). These included cease to flow (< 90 ML
day-1), very low flows (90-400 ML day-1), base flow (400-4000 ML
day-1), small freshes (4000-10000 ML day-1), large freshes
(10,000-20,000 ML day-1), bankfull (20,000-29,000 ML day-1),
and overbank (> 29,000 ML day-1; Appendix 1, Table A1.4). We
examined the changes to the annual frequencies of these seven
flow thresholds to the Menindee Lakes over the three
development phrases (1881-2019) using linear regression
(Appendix 1, Table A1.5). Data were normally distributed, and
assumption of constant variance was met.
Waterbird communities
We examined trends in waterbird communities, which are a useful
indicator of ecosystem change in freshwater ecosystems
(Kingsford and Norman 2002, Green and Elmberg 2014), using
long-term data (1983-2019) collected for some of the lakes within
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Table 1. Changes to flow and flooding regimes of Menindee Lakes from natural, before river regulation of the lakes (pre-development),
subsequent development of the lakes, and its inflowing Barka/Darling River and tributaries with descriptions of the developments and
effects on flooding regimes.

Phase Time Significant policy Description Flow regime Reference

period
Pre-development 1881– Not applicable The lakes filled with sufficient flows in the Local resident, A. F. Cudmore, (Commissioners of the
1959 Barka/Darling River delivering natural observed that the lakes were only dry Royal Commission on the
inundation regimes. “half a dozen or more times” from River Murray 1902)
1870-1900.
Development 1949– Menindee Lakes Weirs, regulators, levees, and channels (Fig. Natural flooding of the lakes altered (Kingsford 2004,
1968 scheme A1.6) constructed under the Menindee Water so some of the main lakes (Lakes Kingsford et al. 2004)
Conservation Act 1949, to store water in the Bijijie, Tandure, Pammamaroo,
lakes, predominantly for irrigated agriculture Menindee, and Cawndilla; Fig. A1.6)
downstream and South Australia but also to were inundated more frequently and
supply Broken Hill and locally, Menindee, and longer to store water. This killed some
the Lower Barka/Darling. floodplain dependent vegetation and
reduced diversity and density of
waterbirds.
1960– Government built Government built dams upstream in tributaries Increasingly, flows reaching Menindee (Kingsford 1995, 2004,
2008 dams in (Fig. A1.6) stored and captured floods (e.g., Lakes declined although lake levels in Webb 2007, Kingsford et
tributaries Burrendong Dam on the Macquarie River and regulated lakes kept artificially high. al. 2016)
†
Keepit Dam on the Namoi River) reducing flows Tandou Lake no longer flooded and
in the Barka/Darling River. was used for irrigated crops (Fig. 1).
1980– Large private Private off-river storage dams expanded in most Allowed more water to be diverted (Kingsford et al. 2004,
present dams built of the tributaries of the Barka/Darling River from the tributaries and the Barka/ Webb 2007, Australian
(Fig. A1.6), designed to divert flood flows stored Darling River, reducing flow to the Academy of Science
for irrigation. Menindee Lakes. 2019)
Water recovery 2009– Establishment of Set aside a target for 2750 GL/year reduction in Aimed to return environmental flows (MDBA 2012, Simpson
present the Murray- diversions to be returned to rivers and wetlands. to the rivers of the Murray-Darling 2017)
Darling Basin Despite this, policy and practice of water sharing Basin, including the Barka/Darling
Plan (cost of plan rules (e.g., floodplain harvesting and River.
$AUD13 billion) activation of A class water licences) reduced
environmental flows to Menindee Lakes.
2012– Northern basin A policy and legislative decision to reduce the Reduction in quantity of flows (Australian Productivity
2016 review amount of water recovered under the Murray- returned to the Barka/Darling River Commission 2018)
†
Darling Basin Plan by 70 GL year in the Barka/ and its tributaries.
Darling River and its tributaries.
2018– Broken Hill Allowed water to be taken from the River No effect on flows and flooding (NSW Department of
2019 pipeline (cost of Murray to supply the city of Broken Hill as the regimes. Primary Industries 2017)
$AUD500 Menindee Lakes became an increasingly
million) unreliable water supply option.
2017– Proposed Developed to achieve 106-180 GL of water Reduction in inundation frequency (NSW Department of
present Menindee Lakes savings through infrastructure measures and and extent for Lakes Menindee and Primary Industries 2017)
SDLAM project operational adjustments, by reducing evaporative Cawndilla in Kinchega National Park
losses. (Fig. A1.6).
†
A class licenses give permission for water users to extract water from an unregulated river system during periods of low flow (NSW DPIE 2020, Water NSW 2022).

a 30 km survey band during the eastern Australia waterbird
surveys (EAWS; Kingsford et al. 2020; Appendix 1, Fig. A1.3).
We examined annual trends in total waterbird abundance within
five functional response groups of species (ducks, piscivores,
herbivores, large waders, and small wading birds; Kingsford et al.
2017). We log-transformed annual waterbird abundances and
used the built in “lm” function in R (R Core Team 2018) to
evaluate potential associations with annual flows at the Menindee
Lakes flow gauge (Appendix 1, Table A1.7). We only reported
declining trends in waterbird abundances, however, these are
predominantly related to river flows and wetland flooding
(Kingsford and Thomas 1995, Kingsford 1999, Kingsford et al.
1999, 2002, 2010, 2017, Roshier et al. 2001, Arthur et al. 2012,
Bino et al. 2015). This also established that waterbirds were a
useful environmental indicator for the Menindee Lakes and the
Darling River. Assumptions of normality, homogeneity of
variance, and linearity were evaluated using residual-fitted,
residual frequency, and normal quantile-quantile plots
(Appendix 1, Fig. A1.2). We also reported on changes in
abundances between the first five and the last five years.
Published evidence for decision-making for the Menindee Lakes
project
We also systematically searched available public databases for
information cited within and relevant to the Menindee Lakes
project (NSW Department of Primary Industries 2017) using Web
of Science (WoS) of Thomson Reuters, Scopus of Elsevier,
Environment Complete of EBSCO, and Google Scholar
databases. We searched using phrases from cited statements
within the business case for the Menindee Lakes project (NSW
Department of Primary Industries 2017). Documents published
after the publication of the business case (2017) were excluded.
We also searched for historical documents in the water
information system for the environment database (University of
New South Wales 2020) and the Trove library database
aggregator, https://trove.nla.gov.au/. We also obtained four
relevant documents through a parliamentary order for papers
from the legislative assembly of the NSW Parliament, provided
in print form converted to a digital form by scanning. We obtained
all but two cited documents in the business case; these two were
not publicly available. All documents were then categorized into
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Fig. 1. (a) Cumulative total annual rainfall of each tributary river and the Barka/Darling River catchments, weighted for each river’s
contribution of flows to the Barka/Darling River (Appendix 1, Table A1.1) and a trendline for average total rainfall (continuous
black line); and changes to flow, (b) annual number of cease to flow days (< 90 ML day-1; 1881-2019) at Wilcannia over the three
phases of water resource development, pre-development, development, and water recovery and, (c) annual flows in the Barka/
Darling River at Menindee Lakes (hindcasted data 1883-1959, see rainfall and flows methods section).

peer-reviewed and non-peer-reviewed documents, grouped by five
themes identified from the content of the business case (government
management, hydrology, ecology, cultural issues, and social issues).
These were then separated into documents cited in the business case
for the Menindee Lakes project and others available but not cited.
We also noted if each peer-reviewed document was open-access or
behind a paywall.
Local stakeholders
We surveyed the local community, which we categorized into three
groups: Aboriginal traditional owners from Menindee, non-
Aboriginal local residents from Menindee and Broken Hill, and
local farmers from the Barka/Darling River immediately above and
below Menindee Lakes. We used in-depth qualitative interviews (10
per group). We used the snowballing method to identify
interviewees (Atkinson and Flint 2001) beginning with key
community representatives. Each group of interviewees was asked
a series of questions about local ecosystem services, government
decision-making, and the consultation process for the Menindee
Lakes project (Appendix 1, Table A1.9). The lead author did all the
interviews to ensure consistency, adopting a semi-structured format
(Creswell et al. 2006, Adams 2015). Interviews were recorded,
transcribed, and then provided to each participant for review before
analysis. These interviews were supplemented with a publicly
available, online survey, which was advertized in the local paper
and radio, for local people covering the same questions, except using
Likert scale responses (de Winter and Dodou 2010).
We used semantic thematic analysis to analyze transcripts using
NVivo qualitative data analysis software (QSR International Pty
Ltd 2020) by semantically coding (identifying and coding parts of
text within transcripts by their explicit meaning) for themes in
participants’ responses to interview questions (Goddard 2011),
beginning with a pilot set of transcripts (one from each group),
which were reviewed by a panel of researchers that did not conduct
interviews (Turner 2010). We identified key themes and subsidiary
issues within the 30 transcripts through this semantic coding. We
determined the frequencies in which each issue was mentioned in
each transcript and explored the associations among different
issues and responses using a hierarchical cluster analysis (Guest
and McLellan 2003). We then used the built in “chisq.test” function
in R (R Core Team 2021) to test for differences in the proportions
of each issue within each theme among the three interview groups
(traditional owner, local resident, and farmer).
RESULTS
Evidence based for decision making
Rainfall, flow, and flooding regimes at Menindee Lakes
Despite several periods of prolonged drought, there was little
evidence of any major changes in annual rainfall patterns in the
tributaries or the Barka/Darling River over a period of 139 years
(1880-2019), despite high variability (Fig. 1a). This contrasts with
broader trends of decreasing rainfall in observational rainfall
records in the basin since the 1950s (Dey et al. 2019, BOM 2020).
Between pre-development and development periods, total weighted
cumulative rainfall, including all tributary rivers of the Barka/
Darling River showed no significant monotonic trend (z > 1.53, p
> 0.12; Fig. 1; Appendix 1, Table A1.1) aside from the Namoi and
Gwydir tributaries (p < 0.01; Appendix 1, Table A1.1). In contrast,
average annual flows in the Barka/Darling River at Menindee Lakes
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decreased by 18% between the development (2849 GL, 1959) and
water recovery periods (1815 GL, 2009-2020; z = 2.08, p = 0.03;
Fig. 1b; Appendix 1, Table A1.6). Average annual flows also
decreased by 21% between the pre-development (3971 GL,
1881-1960) and water recovery periods (1815 GL, 2009-2020;
z=-2.14, p=0.03, Fig. 1b; Appendix 1, Table A1.6). Further, the
annual number of cease-to-flow days (< 90 ML Day-1) at
Menindee Lakes had significantly increased from 1881-2019 (t =
4.58, p < 0.01; Fig. 1c; Appendix 1, Table A1.5). Annual
frequencies (days) of the other six different flow thresholds
examined did not significantly change from 1881-2019 (Appendix
1, Table A1.5). Additionally, other studies found increasing low
flows and decreasing, small freshes, bankfull flows, and overbank
flows at gauges close to Menindee from 1896-2009 (Australian
Academy of Science 2019).
Water resource development and flows
Major infrastructure and policy changes occurred through the
development phase to the Menindee Lakes, Barka/Darling River,
and its tributary rivers (Table 1). Before 1960, Menindee Lakes
filled and dried in response to the flow regimes of the Barka/
Darling River, usually holding some water for some time. This is
based on local observations from a local resident over a 30-year
period in the late 1800s, which included the federation drought
(1895-1903; Table 1). Governments built the Main Weir (dam)
across the river, channels, weirs, and regulators after 1960,
increasing the flooding of some of Menindee Lakes, which were
turned into regulated storages to supply downstream users (Table
1). After the mid-1980s, flows reaching Menindee Lakes decreased
with the large government-built dams and private storages, which
allowed diversion of flows from the Barka/Darling River and its
seven tributaries (Table 1; Appendix 1, Fig. A1.3a).
Waterbird communities
Waterbird abundances were significantly and positively
associated with Barka/Darling River flows at Menindee Lakes (z
= 2.6, p = 0.01; Appendix 1, Table A1.7) and negatively associated
with year (z = 1.9, p = 0.06; Appendix 1, Table A1.8). Total
waterbird abundances on the Menindee Lakes had indicated an
average annual decline of 7.5% (Appendix 1, Table A1.8) and total
decline of ~68% (Appendix 1, Table A1.8) within the development
(1983-2008) and water recovery periods (2009-2019; Fig. 2). Four
out of five functional response groups to waterbirds experienced
significant annual declines between 1983-1988 and 2014-2019 (t
< 2.63, p < 0.01; Appendix 1, Table A1.8). Ducks experienced the
highest decline between 1983-1988 and 2014-2019 with a 72%
average decline followed by piscivores (44%), herbivores (33%),
and large waders (9%). Shorebirds experienced no significant
change. Abundances of four of the five functional response
groups were significantly associated with river flows, with
shorebirds indicating some decline (t = 1.74, p = 0.09; Appendix
1, Table A1.8).
Published evidence based for current for the Menindee Lakes
project
The proportion of peer-reviewed sources cited within the
Menindee Lakes business case did not reflect the number of
relevant publications in the public domain at the time of its
publication (Fig. 3). The evidence base for the Menindee Lakes
project used only 1 peer-reviewed document and 21 non peer-
reviewed documents (Fig. 3). The category of “management and
social issues” referenced no peer-reviewed information (Fig. 4).
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Fig. 2. Annual (1983–2019) abundance of total waterbirds and of each of the five functional response groups
from data collected during the Eastern Australian Waterbird Surveys at Menindee Lakes (Kingsford et al. 2020)
showing fitted linear trends (95% CI shaded), annual average percent decline, and total decline over the 37 years
(average 1983-1988 cf. 2014-2019).

Fig. 3. Available published evidence based in the principal
decision-making document, the Menindee Lakes water savings
plan business case (NSW Department of Primary Industries
2017; orange) for the proposed Menindee Lakes project,
compared to what was available at time of publication (green),
showing proportions of peer reviewed (P) and non-peer reviewed
(O-other), grouped by the total and within five themes: ecology,
hydrology, culture, management, and socioeconomic issues with
numbers of references listed.
Fig. 4. The two major issues from in person and online
interviews, government management (orange) and changes to
water ecosystem services (green) among three stakeholder
groups: local farmers, traditional owners, and local residents
with the four most prominent issues (issues with the highest %
coding within transcripts) for each theme identified for each
stakeholder group (Appendix 1, Table A2.2).

A large proportion of the relevant, uncited peer-reviewed
information in the public domain was from open-access academic
journals (41%). Many other relevant independent reports were
freely available.
There were no data or associated modeling used to justify the 3
different estimated water savings (72, 106, 116 GL) for the 22
structural and operational measures within the Menindee Lakes
business case or for the original estimate of 180 GL water saving
estimates originally expected by the Australian Government. The
latter figure was 250% higher than the lower estimate in the
business case (Table 1).
Furthermore, there was a range of relevant and available (mostly
government funded and produced) reports on hydrology, ecology,
and cultural issues that were not cited (Fig. 4). There was no
reference to Kinchega National Park occupying a substantial
proportion of the Menindee Lakes (~28% wetland; NSW
National Parks and Wildlife Service 1999; Fig. 1). There was no
reference to the Barkandji native title claim, the effects on
Indigenous water values, available relevant government reports,
and peer-reviewed literature pertaining to this claim. The
Barkandji water rights and interests were not cited.
Stakeholders’ perspectives on the proposed Menindee Lakes
project
We identified 2 emergent issues with the Menindee Lakes project
in our stakeholder in-person and online survey interviews (14
respondents): government management and changes to water
ecosystem services. These two key issues emerged from our five
themes (hydrology, ecology, culture, socioeconomics, and
government management; Appendix 2, Table A2.2), which were
identified via thematic semantic coding (Goddard 2011) in
transcripts and survey responses. The government management
theme referred to issues that dealt with government engagement
with the community about the SDLAM project, decision making
for the Menindee Lakes, and the Lower Darling, more broadly.
The water ecosystem services theme referred to the implications
of this decision making for ecosystem services for local
communities.
Government management
Within the issue of government management, trust and
consultation processes were the major concerns (Fig. 4, Table 2).
Many stakeholders and all online survey respondents indicated
their dissatisfaction with government consultation, expressing
little confidence that their views were considered for decision
making regarding the Menindee Lakes project. The consultation
process was often deemed tokenistic, rather than a process that
genuinely searched for community knowledge, with many
describing it as a “box-ticking” exercise (Fig. 4, Table 2). Many
interviewees concluded that the engagement process excluded
most of the community because stakeholder representatives were
selected by governments, and events were poorly advertized and
occurred at inconvenient times for most, often requiring the
community to make immediate judgments based on little
information (Fig. 4). Interviewees expressed fatigue and
frustration with government consultation processes, with several
stakeholder groups mentioning that they had walked away from
the process (Table 2).
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Many interviewees and all survey respondents did not support
the alternative water supply for Broken Hill provided by the
pipeline (Table 1), believing that the Menindee Lakes had the
capacity to supply the town if its water supply had been properly
managed. One interviewee suggested that the pipeline may have
been developed to ensure water didn’t have to come down the
Darling River and could bypass the Menindee Lakes (Table 2).
Local resident interviewees discussed government management
issues of trust and the consultation processes more than
traditional owners and local farmers (χ2 = 5.01, p = 0.08;
Appendix 2, Table A2.1), albeit not statistically significant. This
could indicate that trust and consultation may be more relevant
to local residents, or that traditional owners have lower
expectations and therefore do not express their concerns.
Changes to water ecosystem services
Interviewees had detailed local knowledge of the hydrology of
the Barka/Darling River and Menindee Lakes. Changes to flows
for Menindee Lakes and the Barka/Darling River were a primary
concern for interviewees (Fig. 4), with one farmer noting that the
length of cease to flow events for the Darling had increased and
stressed the declining upstream flows (Table 2). Connectivity of
the Barka/Darling River and managing the entire system was also
considered a priority (Fig. 4) and one interviewee considered a 70
GL water target at Menindee unacceptable for downstream water
needs (Table 2). Interviewees also consistently indicated that the
evidence and argument for achieving water savings, through
reducing evaporative losses at Menindee Lakes was problematic,
with water accounting lacking in integrity (Table 2). Issues of
connectivity and changes to flows were discussed more by local
farmers than by the local residents or traditional owners (χ2 =
5.43, p = 0.07; Appendix 2, Table A2.1), albeit not statistically
significant, indicating that connectivity and flows may be more
relevant to local farmers because they are often more immediately
affected by reductions in flows.
Most interviewees mentioned ecological changes, ecosystem
services, and changes to local fish populations, describing aspects
of ecosystem collapse (Fig. 4.). All online survey respondents
indicated that they had noticed changes in the diversity and
abundance of local fish. Many interviewees also noticed declines
and believed this was exacerbated by mass fish kill events, with
one traditional owner noting the condition of the Barka/Darling
as the worst they had seen in their lifetime (Table 2). Diseases in
fish were also a common concern, especially for traditional owners
who fish for food. Reductions in yabbies, mussels, flood dependent
vegetation (e.g., river red gums), and birdlife (e.g., waterbirds)
were often mentioned by all groups of interviewees (Table 2). One
farmer described being confronted by dead mussels and
emaciated kangaroos looking for water, as “post-apocalyptic”
(Table 2). These concerns extended to the loss of ecosystem
services to surrounding communities such as declining fish
populations for local anglers and loss of vegetation for bank
stabilization. Ecological decline was also linked to economic
decline, with Menindee being described as “just a shadow” of
what it once was (Table 2). Interviewees from the farmer group
discussed ecological changes and changes to ecosystem services
more than local residents and traditional owners (χ2 = 9.01, p =
0.01; Appendix 2, Table A2.1).
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Table 2. Interview quotes from stakeholders (local resident, traditional owner, and farmer) in relation to the Menindee Lakes project,
exemplifying views on the five major themes: government management, hydrology, ecology, culture, and socioeconomics.

Theme Stakeholder group Interview quotes

Government Local resident “Um, I would seek to inject some integrity to the system. So, by selecting stakeholders and advising them that they’ve been selected
management to be consulted as representatives of the community. Um, you know, that’s probably the first error because they haven’t allowed the
community to say they’re interested.”
Traditional owner “So, all the consultation that have happened in the last three years, I've been part of it. And to see how it’s played out politically and
how the government has its own agenda basically, um, we’ve got frustrated enough just to walk away because, all we’ve seen is ticking
that box and they wasn’t listening to what we had to say. And, that still continues today. They’ll bring their agenda to the table. And
that’s what I said. We’ve got to get away from their agenda and create our own. When they bring up new ideas, they go and handpick
or keep the ones that will support them.”
Local resident “They announced that Broken Hill was going to get a pipeline from the Murray River for a secured water supply. Now that word
secure, got to remember we had a secured water supply before 2012. It seems to be since the Barwon Darling water sharing plan came
into place that the water security had changed greatly. I think the pipeline was developed to ensure that water didn’t have to come
down the Darling.”
Hydrology Farmer “We’ve farmed citrus here, since the 1920s, and we only ever had cease to flow for no longer than three months at a time. Even before
the Menindee Lakes storage scheme was built, we had regular flows along the Darling and the Lower Darling and through the Lakes,
because there was always one of the tributaries contributing, putting fresh water down. So, it never used to cease to flow or stop
flowing for long periods of time like it has recently.”
Farmer “Yeah, [connectivity] really needs a lot more consideration, the end of system ?ows at Menindee. Menindee’s not the end of the
system, there’s another 500 kilometres of the Darling River that needs to be looked after as well, and to have a 70 gigalitres water
target at Menindee is not acceptable.”
Local resident “You could argue that for those three years, that the lakes were dry, you were saving anywhere between 400 and 700 gigalitres that the
Murray Darling Basin Authority precariously put out as the evaporation rate. You could say, any amount of water has been saved
because it’s not evaporating, but if the water is not getting there to start with, then there’s a hole in the logic and there’s definitely no
integrity in the accounting.”
Ecology Farmer “Um, it’s, it’s a really confronting site, dead mussels along the side of the riverbank. you know, to see emaciated kangaroos, um, with
no energy looking around for water and birds that are just, you know, trying to stay out of the sun with their beaks open, trying to
keep cool. Um, it’s really, uh, uh, uh, post-apocalyptic type landscapes. It’s really hard to describe, but you know, you instinctively
and intuitively know that it’s not right. It doesn’t feel right.”
Local resident “The economic impact of those [environmental] changes have been very, very evident when you only have to drive through Menindee
to see it’s just a shadow of what it was before. That’s kind of a disaster that’s kind of been unfolding for quite a long time now. Yeah.”
Traditional owner “When I was a kid, we didn’t even know what a fish kill was. The fish never died, when I was a kid. And I was born in 1947, so makes
me 73 this year. And the conditions of the river now, I’ve never seen it. And it started back in 2010, 2011, and from there on it just
went worse and worse and worse.”
Culture Traditional owner “It’s just like the blood draining and out of our body. Really. If you haven’t got that water in the River and the Lakes, it’s like
perishing. You can’t get to the river for those cultural activities that we usually go out and do, like fishing and gathering and the
hunting too.”
Local resident “Where is the Aboriginal voice in this? These are the traditional owners. We have traditional owners; we have native title recognition
for most of the far West with the Barkandji native title owners. Where are they, in the yes, no factor. Why isn’t it that there, that is a
federal recognition.”
Traditional owner “We’ve been nearly three years without water. That in itself doesn’t let you practice your culture, nothing. You know, you can’t take
your kids down the river. Can’t get a feed of fish to feed anyone, including yourself.”
Traditional owner “Well it’s [The Lakes and River] part of, it’s part our dreaming. Some of the people that their totems, that were talking about, um,
and it’s part of our culture, our spirituality. Basically, everything, for us, it’s not just the fish, you know what I mean? It’s more than
that. And I guess people might just see it as a big fish, but for us that’s one of our people, or part of our spirit that dies, when that
fish dies.”
Socioeconomics Local resident “I work for the Far West local health districts. And The lakes have been dry at least twice while I’ve been back in the last five years,
I’ve noticed that that’s had a really big impact on the community. The biggest thing I noticed back in 2015 was that the lakes were dry
when I got here. And there was a lot of anxiety in the community, in the surrounding areas. And people were complaining about skin
irritations and the quality and smell and just feeling like it wasn’t a safe water supply.”
Local resident “There’d be droves of people coming up from Victoria fishing, it was quite a popular spot and but there is nobody here now. Half of
Broken Hill would be out along the banks of Pamamaroo and no camping spots were available around the area in the holidays. But
that was when there was plenty of water about and things to be had and things to do and fish to catch and yabbies. As It’s declined,
it’s just gone all put.”

Local farmers and local residents usually described changes to
ecosystem services, although traditional owners commented on
reduced availability to similar cultural services because of the
ecological decline in the lakes and river (Fig. 4, Table 2). For
example, one traditional owner described the removal of water
from the Barka/Darling and Menindee Lakes comparable to the
blood draining out of their body (Table 2). Education was also
affected, with another traditional owner describing how the lack
of water stopped them from practicing their culture through
placed-based learning (Table 2).
Through the business case process, the government did not
acknowledge or recognize water rights or management practices
related to Barkandji knowledge. For example, a local resident
expressed frustration with the lack of recognition of Barkandji
native title owners in the “yes, no, factor” of the project (Table 2).
Traditional owners’ sense of identity and spiritual relations with the
river and lakes were also affected by ecological degradation. One
traditional owner described the death of a fish as akin to the death
of a community member or spirit (Table 2). Traditional owners
discussed the availability of cultural services more than local
residents and famers (χ2 = 41.23, p < 0.01; Appendix 2, Table A2.1).
Community health, recreation, and local economic activity were
also affected by reductions in water quality and the loss of a secure
water supply. A local resident had noticed increased community
anxiety and complaints about the safety of the water supply (Table

2). All online survey respondents indicated that environmental
changes had negatively impacted their communities. Reduction
in local agriculture, the loss of the recreational use of the rivers
and lakes for the community, and tourism were considered to have
lowered economic activity, population level, and employment.
Interviewees from the local resident group discussed community
health, changes to recreation, and local economic activity more
than local farmers and traditional owners (χ2 = 29.45, p < 0.01;
Appendix 2, Table A2.1).
DISCUSSSION
Our analysis of the proposal to achieve water savings at Menindee
Lakes through the SDLAM identified significant shortcomings
in the adaptive governance of the project at local and basin-wide
scales. These shortcomings led to a project with unclear and
poorly substantiated dividends in environmental water savings at
the basin scale but with clear local environmental costs. There
were also serious problems in the use of scientific evidence. Our
document analysis showed that the information basis for the
project was predominantly non-peer-reviewed (Fig. 3), often in
place of relevant government produced and funded reports, and
peer-reviewed information generated independently of government
processes. Significant information in peer-reviewed research and
government reports, commissioned specifically for the prospect
of altering the lakes, was not included in the primary decision-
making document. Importantly, details of how projected water
savings would be achieved were not transparent or accessible to
the communities.
The consultation process was dysfunctional as our community
interviews demonstrate. A primary problem in this process was a
failure to acknowledge the evident, long-term ecological decline
of the Barka/Darling and Menindee Lakes, alongside the impacts
of losing a secure water supply for Menindee. This unsurprisingly
resulted in the local community becoming disenfranchised with
government engagement. We propose that these problems
resulted from the project’s inability to achieve the intended
“adaptive and outcomes-based governance approach” (NSW
Department of Primary Industries 2017:96) to deliver a basin-
scale environmental water dividend at significant local cost. First,
we will discuss how insufficient consideration of the key issues of
scale and ecological condition have comprised the effectiveness
of the project. Second, we will discuss the administrative
legitimacy of the project, which failed in terms of two important
factors of adaptive governance (Esty 2006, Cosens and Williams
2012, O’Donnell et al. 2019), i.e., objective expertise as the basis
for decisions, and the inclusion of public dialogue (and therefore
local knowledges) in decision-making processes.
Scale and ecological condition
The Menindee SDLAM project is an example of a governance
scale mismatch, in which a locally scaled solution is used to
achieve large-scale governance objectives (Cumming et al. 2006,
Guerrero et al. 2013). At the scale of the Murray-Darling Basin
plan, governments (NSW and Australian federal) considered the
Menindee Lakes project an opportunity to “save” water from
evaporation, which could then be “packaged” as environmental
water for the entire basin, thus meeting the Australian
Government commitments to deliver on its target of 2750 GL
year-1 of water being returned to the rivers of the MDB (Jackson
and Head 2021). Additionally, policy and legislation for the basin
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include an environmental equivalence test, meaning water saved
from a project such as the Menindee Lakes project must deliver
a net environmental benefit overall (Mosley et al. 2010). The
requirement echoes the original justification for a large-scale
federal policy like the basin plan in which widespread
environmental decline felt particularly hard in small basin
communities like Menindee. This large-scale governance
imperative failed to address the local environmental costs and has
therefore struggled to be translated to an effective solution at the
local level. Interestingly, this mirrors the failings of other complex
governance arrangements in giving effect to large-scale
international agreements through the delivery of environmental
water for Ramsar wetlands in the MDB under the 2007 Water Act
(Kirsch et al. 2021).
Our study of environmental condition at the local scale (declining
flows and waterbird abundances) showed that the Menindee
Lakes ecosystem was in decline. We found that annual flows in
the Barka/Darling River supplying Menindee Lakes have
continued to decline over three development periods (Fig. 1b;
Appendix 1, Table A1.6), further adding to increasing evidence
of long-term declining flows (Kingsford 1995, Thoms and
Sheldon 2000, Leblanc et al. 2012, Australian Academy of Science
2019, BOM 2020) and increasing drying of the river with more
cease to flow events (Australian Academy of Science 2019, BOM
2020; Fig. 1c) driven primarily by water resource development in
the Barka/Darling tributaries. Despite several periods of
prolonged drought, there was little evidence of any major changes
in annual rainfall patterns in the tributaries or the Barka/Darling
River over a period of 139 years (1880-2019), despite high
variability (Fig. 1a).
The Menindee Lakes project’s focus on water savings failed to
address the fundamental importance of the lakes as locally valued
ecosystems, which naturally fill and dry (Kingsford et al. 2004,
Leigh et al. 2010, Bino et al. 2015) and sustain ecological processes
and human livelihoods (Porter et al. 2007, Kingsford et al. 2010).
Our analysis of ecological indicators of long-term decline, a factor
in determining adaptive capacity (Folke et al. 2002, Allen and
Holling 2010), showed long-term declines to waterbird
communities in Menindee Lakes (Fig. 2). This decline occurred
over more than three decades, driven by declining river flows (Fig.
1c; Appendix 1, A1.6), indicative of the deterioration of overall
ecosystem health (Kingsford et al. 2004, Green and Elmberg
2014). Local communities reported similar declines (Appendix 2,
Table A2.2), reflecting declines in fish-eating birds (Fig. 2). Local
fish communities were also in decline (Gehrke et al. 1995, Gilligan
2005, Wallace et al. 2008), most seriously reflected in the mass
fish kills of millions of fish in 2018-2019, attributed to lack of
flows in the Barka/Darling River (Australian Academy of Science
2019). The decommissioning of Lakes Cawndilla and Menindee
under the Menindee Lakes project will further disrupt essential
ecological processes, given the importance of the lakes as a basin-
wide breeding source for golden perch, Macquaria ambigua,
(Ebner et al. 2009, Stuart and Sharpe 2020).
Our interviews revealed the community impacts from this
ecological decline. Losses to local agriculture and recreational use
of the lakes have depressed local economic activity, caused
population declines, and reduced employment opportunities,
especially in Menindee, which was described as “a shadow of what

it once was” (Table 2). The loss of a secure water supply has had
negative impacts on the community’s cultural, physical, and
spiritual well-being, and traditional owners have lost access to
highly valued cultural resources. Local people are acutely aware
of the impacts of long-term ecological decline on their
communities, with an increasing realization that this is
fundamentally a consequence of government decision making
(Australian Academy of Science 2019; Fig. 4). Decision making
disempowered and frustrated many in the local communities.
Policy was considered to have disproportionately favored needs
of upstream users (Grafton 2019), often at the expense of Lower
Darling communities (South Australian Government 2019). On
this basis, the options proposed for the Menindee Lakes project
are predicted to have further major environmental and social costs
for the Menindee Lakes and local communities.
Effectiveness
The project, as conceived in the documents we relied on for this
analysis, has received considerable community criticism and
progression was suspended by governments in late 2021. The
project is currently being rescoped. This project was an example
of ineffective environmental policy because it failed to address
long-term ecological decline and the social impacts of this decline,
while also failing to achieve the project goal of delivering water
savings that had net environmental benefits and positive outcomes
for communities. Scale played a key role in this failure with the
NSW government’s fixation on achieving a federal scale policy
objective with an incorrectly scaled environmental offset for the
use of the environment elsewhere in the basin. There is no evidence
that government water agencies drew upon ecological data that
would guarantee any satisfactory form of commensurability
between the water solutions on offer or a “like for like”
substitution (Maron et al. 2016, May et al. 2017, South Australian
Government 2019).
Considering the multijurisdictional nature of river systems and
the increasing global popularity of biodiversity offsets as policy
tools, understanding how large-scale governance and
environmental offsets in water impact the effectiveness and
legitimacy of environmental policies will become an important
issue for adaptive governance. This is particularly important for
future attempts to govern water across large spatial scales and
with the use of market mechanisms, such as water trading, for
transboundary rivers (Zeitoun and Mirumachi 2008).
Objective expertise
Despite the availability of rigorous data (e.g., waterbirds, fish,
hydrology, and cultural data) and good understandings of trends
and requirements of key biota, there was little consideration in
the business case of these ecological aspects of the lakes. Further,
there was no inclusion of information from the Ecological
Sustainable Development project implemented by the NSW water
agency (Table 2), a large series of studies commissioned
specifically to provide information on the impacts of modifying
the lakes at a substantial cost of $A2.5 million. A serious omission
was the NSW Government’s obligation for conservation of
Kinchega National Park (NSW National Parks and Wildlife
Service 1999), which must be managed for (inter alia) the
conservation of biodiversity, natural landscapes, and cultural
features that provide opportunities for public appreciation. These
conservation values would decline with the Menindee Lakes
project.
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The project did not deliver transparency or accountability in
decision making, an important step in enabling public
participation (De Stefano et al. 2012) and legitimate governance
(Huitema et al. 2009). Despite significant tax expenditure, there
was an absence of any peer-reviewed modeling available to the
public in relation to the water savings estimated by governments.
Two reviews of the business case, gained through a parliamentary
order for papers, identified the business case estimates were based
on modeling conducted by the MDBA in 2016, with little
information on relative contribution of structural and
operational contributions to water savings. Further, the water
savings estimate did not incorporate the ongoing problem of
declining flows with upstream development (Kingsford 2000,
Thoms and Sheldon 2000). This lack of transparency also
extended to the accessibility of the primary decision-making
document. This was not accessible for public scrutiny, with the
business case (produced in 2017) being made available only after
a freedom of information (FOI) request from the Australian
Senate in March 2018 (South Australian Government 2019).
Inclusion of public dialogue in decision-making processes
Adaptive governance requires meaningful public dialogue with a
two-way flow of information between government agencies and
communities, providing opportunities for knowledge exchange
and deliberation between the groups affected by decisions and
decision makers. The experiences of the community members who
participated in this study indicated limited meaningful public
dialogue for the Menindee Lakes project. Many in the local
community commented on the lack of transparency in decision
making and felt that they had not received enough relevant
information or time to make informed contributions.
Government consultation processes were often deemed
“tokenistic” with key stakeholder groups withdrawing from
government engagement several times. The accessibility of
government consultation events was often limited to those invited
as part of a consultation committee and not widely available for
many in the community. Many observed that water savings
unfairly targeted Menindee Lakes, given significant evaporative
losses from artificial private storages upstream (Webb McKeown
and Associates Pty Ltd 2007, Jackson and Head 2020). As with
many other systems in decline (Postel 1997), ecosystem services
have compromised the functioning of the community. These
impacts, combined with a dysfunctional community engagement
process and lack of transparency, eroded already wavering trust
in governments, an important component of community
participation (Reed 2008, De Stefano et al. 2012). This element
of trust was particularly important, considering the significant
involvement of Indigenous stakeholders in government
engagement and the Barkandji native title claim (Jackson 2019).
Despite promises of significant water savings, several serious
departures from an effective adaptive governance approach
profoundly affected the outcomes for this project, particularly in
relation to the local community. Key to this were issues of
administrative legitimacy, especially when attempting to create
reciprocal dialogue with the community. If government agencies
transparently presented all the evidence and included options
presented by the community, decision making would have been
considerably more inclusive. Objective expertise was not part of
the decision-making process for the project because the long-term
ecological conditions of the Barka/Darling and Menindee Lakes

were largely ignored, in favor of an unclear, predominantly
engineered water savings offset, which could not achieve
environmental equivalency, as required under the MDB plan. A
focus on achieving basin-scale, water savings outcomes at the local
scale environmental cost, resulted in a missed opportunity to
develop a management plan locally, focused on restoring the lakes
and their flooding and drying cycles, as previously suggested by
the community (Australian Academy of Science 2019). This could
have delivered some water savings as well as restoration by
reinstating drying and flooding patterns (Kingsford et al. 2002).
The missteps of this project highlighted the importance of scale
in achieving effective and legitimate solutions through adaptive
governance approaches for river systems. Furthermore, these
governance approaches should encourage locally driven
conservation management of wetlands, which prioritizes
objective expertise and meaningful public dialogue in the pursuit
of more sustainable management of complex social-ecological
systems.
Declarations
The authors have no conflicts of interest.
Acknowledgments:
Our thanks to all interviewees for their time and effort participating
in the interviews. We thank the Menindee Local Aboriginal Land
Council and Sam Fields for providing the space to conduct interviews
in Menindee. Financial support was provided by the Centre for
Ecosystem Science. We thank all traditional owners, local residents,
and local farmers who participated in this study. All interviews and
surveys were conducted with ethical approval for this research, which
was provided by the University of New South Wales Human
Research Ethics Council (HC number HC200429). This research
was supported by an Australian Research Council Linkage Grant
(LP180100159).
Data Availability:
If the manuscript is accepted, we will make all code and relevant
data available. For our human subjects, we are not able to make
their data available.
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Appendix 1
Table A1.1 Summary of 24 pairwise comparison coefficients between different stages of water

resources development (1890-1959 (pre-development), 1960-2008 (development), 2009-2020 (water

recovery), used to test for differences in annual rainfall in the catchments of each tributary river system

(see Fig. 1) of the Darling River flowing to Menindee Lakes and their relative flow contributions1
Contribution to River Period 1 Period 2 Estimate SE z.ratio Pr(>|z|)
annual discharge
in the Darling (%)

All 1890-1959 1960-2008 -8.12 5.29 1.53 0.12

catchments 1890-1959 2009-2020 -5.25 9.70 0.54 0.58

1960-2008 2009-2020 2.86 10.00 0.28 0.77

23.2 Border 1890-1959 1960-2008 -37.36 32.18 1.16 0.24
Rivers 1890-1959 2009-2020 -40.50 58.52 0.69 0.48
1960-2008 2009-2020 -3.14 60.12 -0.05 0.95
15.4 Condamine- 1890-1959 1960-2008 5.72 30.76 -0.18 0.85
Balonne 1890-1959 2009-2020 -13.28 55.83 -0.33 0.81
1960-2008 2009-2020 -19.00 57.31 0.23 0.74
1.2 Darling 1890-1959 1960-2008 -38.08 23.93 1.59 0.11
1890-1959 2009-2020 -77.18 43.94 1.75 0.07
1960-2008 2009-2020 -39.09 45.33 -0.86 0.38
14.2 Gwydir 1890-1959 1960-2008 -97.63 33.28 2.93 <0.01*
1890-1959 2009-2020 -36.23 61.21 0.59 0.55
1960-2008 2009-2020 61.40 63.19 0.97 0.33
22.6 Macquarie- 1890-1959 1960-2008 -60.12 34.17 1.75 0.07
Bogan- 1890-1959 2009-2020 -11.88 63.07 0.18 0.85
Castlereagh 1960-2008 2009-2020 48.23 65.20 0.73 0.45
23.4 Namoi 1890-1959 1960-2008 -113.52 35.55 3.19 <0.01*
1890-1959 2009-2020 -81.80 65.50 1.24 0.21
1960-2008 2009-2020 31.71 67.67 0.46 0.63
0.01 Paroo 1890-1959 1960-2008 -29.57 26.81 1.10 0.27
1890-1959 2009-2020 -12.38 49.23 0.25 0.80
1960-2008 2009-2020 17.19 50.78 0.33 0.73
0.01 Warrego 1890-1959 1960-2008 -14.84 41.80 0.35 0.72
1890-1959 2009-2020 -23.60 76.90 0.30 0.75
1960-2008 2009-2020 -8.75 79.38 -0.11 0.91
 Table A1.2 Rainfall stations and station numbers for each catchment used to create an annual
rainfall index. BOM annual cumulative rainfall data (comprised of 12 cumulative monthly rainfall
values) for each station was averaged before it was weighted to each catchments contribution (%)
to the Barka/Darlings flows. This allowed us to account for gaps in data availability among the
rainfall stations.
𝑅𝑎𝑖𝑛𝑓𝑎𝑙𝑙 𝑖𝑛𝑑𝑒𝑥 = 𝐴𝑛𝑛𝑢𝑎𝑙 𝑐𝑢𝑚𝑢𝑙𝑎𝑡𝑖𝑣𝑒 𝑟𝑎𝑖𝑛𝑓𝑎𝑙𝑙 𝑓𝑜𝑟 𝑐𝑎𝑡𝑐ℎ𝑒𝑚𝑒𝑛𝑡 (𝑚𝑚) ×
𝐶𝑎𝑡𝑐ℎ𝑚𝑒𝑛𝑡 𝑐𝑜𝑛𝑡𝑟𝑖𝑏𝑢𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛 𝑡𝑜 𝑓𝑙𝑜𝑤𝑠 𝑓𝑜𝑟 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝐷𝑎𝑟𝑙𝑖𝑛𝑔 (%)

Catchment Rainfall station Rainfall station number Data available

Border Deepwater 056008 1890-2019

Condamine- Mitchell 063076 1892-2019

Balonne

Dulacca 042010 1890-2015

Darling Ivanhoe 049019 1890-2016

Ivanhoe AD 049000 2000-2019

Gwydir Guyra PO 056016 1890-2019

Guyra Hospital 056229 1982-20191

Uralla 056034 1902-20192

Bundara 056006 1890-20153

Macquarie Bogan Binnaway 064013 1890-20194

Castlereagh

Blackville 055006 1890-20195

Oberon 063063 1890-20196

Gulgong 062013 1882-20197

Sofala 063076 1893-20198

Namoi Nundle 055041 1891-20199

Weabonga 055172 1900-201910

Quirindi 055049 1890-201911

Paroo Hungerford 044181 1890-201912

Warrego Nive 044057 1890-201913

Morven 044050 1890-201914

Minnie Down 035190 1894-201915

1
minus 1999,2002,2006. 2minus 2004, 2005, 2008-2011, 2016, 2018. 3 minus 1976, 2004-2007, 2012,2013. 4 minus 1993, 2001,
2000, 2007, 2009, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2015, 2018. 5 minus 1941,1942,1981,1989,1999,2001,2002,2004,2007. 6 minus
1992,1989,2005,2016,2018. 7 minus 1999,2003,2014. 8 minus 2002-2008, 2010, 2014,2016. 9 minus 1999-2008, 2013,2014. 10
minus 1962,2004,2008,2013-2017. 11 minus 2014. 12 minus 2005,2010,2011. 13 minus 1973,2001-2013. 14 minus 1998-
2003,2010. 15 minus 1985,1989,1996,2002-2018.
Table A1.3 Coefficients and model fit values of linear regression used to model annual flows on the
Darling River at Menindee when there were no data (dates x-y), based on annual flows at the
Wilcannia gauge. lm(formula = Menindee ~ Wilcannia)

Estimate Std. Error t-value Pr(>|t||) Model Fit Values

Intercept -116.81 316.07 -0.37 0.09 Adj. R² = 0.90 R² = 0.97

Menindee 1.26 0.06 21.08 <0.01 F(1,46) = 444.55 p = < 0.01*

Figure A1.1 Plotted linear regression model of Wilcannia annual flows and Menindee annual
flows (R² = 0.97) *p=<0.05
 Figure A1.2 Residual-fitted, residual frequency, and normal quantile-quantile plots for log
transformed data used for linear regression model of Wilcannia and Menindee flows using 72 years
where data from both locations were recorded.

Residuals vs Fitted

Histogram of wil_men_regression$residuals
2
4
0.5

25
20
0.0
Residuals

15
Frequency
−0.5

10
5
−1.0

6 7 8 9 10
0

Fitted values
lm(Menindee ~ Wilcannia) −1.0 −0.5 0.0 0.5

wil_men_regression$residuals

Normal Q−Q

2
4
2
Standardized residuals

0
−2
−4

−2 −1 0 1 2

Theoretical Quantiles
lm(Menindee ~ Wilcannia)
Figure A1.3 – a) Location of the Darling River Basin (grey), within the Murray-Darling Basin,

Australia, showing Menindee Lakes (ML) and the seven tributaries of the Darling River (DR); Paroo

River (PR), Warrego River (WR), Condamine/Balonne River (C-BR), Border Rivers (B-R), Gwydir

River (GR), Namoi River (NR), Macquarie-Bogan-Castlereagh River (M-B-CR). b) Locations of the

main seven Menindee Lakes; Lake Balaka (LB), Lake Bijijie (LBi), Lake Tandure (LT), Lake

Pamamaroo (LP), Lake Menindee (LM), Lake Cawndilla (LC), Lake Tandou (LT), within the Darling

River floodplain, showing the weir pool, Lake Wetherell with installed flow regulators (open red

circles) and the proposed regulator on the Morton-Boulka channel (filled red circle), channels (solid

red line), Kinchega National Park (green), the aerial waterbird survey band (hatched) and Menindee

town and flow gauges at Menindee and Wilcannia on the Darling River
Table A1.4 Daily flow thresholds and their relevant flow rates and ecological rationales (NSW
Government 2018) used for analysis long-term changes to flows in the Darling River at Menindee
Lakes.

Threshold Flow rate Rationale

Cease to flow <90 ML day-1 All native fish species maintained
Very low flows 90-400 ML day-1 All native fish species and their
ecosystem functions maintained
Base flow 400-4000 ML day-1 Local movement of native fish
maintained
Small freshes 4000-10000 ML day-1 “River specialist’ and ‘generalist’ fish
species spawning. Improved condition
of native fish species. Recruitment of
‘river specialist’, ‘generalist’ and
“flow specialist’ fish species.
Large freshes 10000-20000 ML day-1 Spawning of “flow specialist” fish
species. Improved ecosystem
functions and pre-spawning of native
fish.
Bankfull 20000-29,000 ML day-1 Recruitment and spawning of
“floodplain specialist”
Overbank >29,000 ML day-1 Inundation of floodplain. Stimulating
flowering, germination and seeding of
floodplain vegetation communities.
Breeding and recruitment of native
fish species. Waterbird and frog
habitats promote recruitment and
breeding.
Table A1.5 Summary of outputs from linear regressions for the annual frequency of seven flow
threshold (days/year) over time (year), from 1881-2019.

Estimate Std. Error t-value Pr(>|t|)

Cease to Intercept -1425.70 484.45 -2.94 < 0.01*

flows Year 0.78 0.25 3.15 < 0.01*
Very Low Intercept -443.26 353.67 -1.25 0.21
Flows Year 0.26 0.18 1.43 0.16
Base Flows Intercept 127.57 398.62 0.32 0.75
Year 0.00 0.20 0.01 0.99
Small Intercept 286.69 266.20 1.08 0.28
Freshes Year -0.12 0.14 -0.86 0.39
Large Intercept 312.62 222.86 1.40 0.16
Freshes Year -0.14 0.11 -1.19 0.24
Bankfull Intercept -317.42 162.51 -1.95 0.06
Year 0.18 0.08 2.15 0.07
Overbank Intercept 604.44 436.39 1.39 0.18
Year -0.28 0.22 -1.24 0.22

Table A1.6 Summary of outputs from pairwise comparison of coefficients (from ANOVA) used to
test for difference in annual flows of Menindee Lakes, through three stages of water resources
development; 1890-1959 (pre-development), 1959-2008 (increasing development), 2009-2020
(water recovery).

Period Period Estimate SE z value Pr(>|z|)

1959-2008 2009-2020 1.30 0.68 2.08 0.03*
1890-1959 1959-2008 -0.08 0.38 0.00 0.9
1890-1959 2009-2020 1.21 0.66 -2.14 0.03*

*p=0.05
Table A1.7 Summary of conditional average outputs from linear models of total waterbird and
functional group counts (from East Australian Waterbird Survey data; Kingsford et al. 2020), flows
at Menindee Flows (Flows) and time (Year).

Functional Variable Estimate Std. Error Adjusted SE z value Pr(>|z|)

Group
Total (Intercept) 107.11 99 100.62 1.06 0.28
Flows 0.63 0.24 0.24 2.6 0.01*
Year -0.07 0.04 0.04 1.9 0.06
Shorebirds (Intercept) 109. 93.6 95.40 1.14 0.25
Flows -0.07 0.03 0.04 1.74 0.09
Year -1.16 1.03 1.07 1.1 0.23
Piscivores (Intercept) 52.94 62.6 64.91 2.35 0.02*
Flow s 0.66 0.17 0.17 0.2 <0.00*
Year -0.07 0.03 0.03 2.3 0.01*
Herbivores (Intercept) 43.06 79.35 80.64 0.53 0.59
Flows 0.73 0.24 80.64 2.93 <0.00*
Year -0.06 0.04 0.04 1.35 0.17
Large (Intercept) 89 106 95.4 1.13 0.64
Waders Flows -0.04 0.07 0.06 1.21 0.05*
Year -1.16 1.34 1.03 1.01 0.22
Ducks (Intercept) 237.10 89.53 92.44 2.54 0.01*
Flows -0.11 0.04 0.04 2.53 0.01*
Year 0.35 0.25 0.26 1.4 0.2*

*p=0.05
Table A1.8 Mean counts, total percent decline, and annual percent decline of total waterbirds and
functional groups between two development periods in the Darling upstream of Menindee;
increasing development (1983-1988) and water recovery (2014-2019).

Functional Group Period Mean Total % Annual %

Decline Decline

Total 1983-1988 14188 68 7.5

2014-2019 4421
Shorebirds 1983-1988 705 No significant No significant
decline decline
2014-2019 146
Piscivores 1983-1988 2941 44 7
2014-2019 1646
Herbivores 1983-1988 2716 33 6
2014-2019 1808
Large waders 1983-1988 193 9 1
2014-2019 176
Ducks 1983-1988 7630 72 11
2014-2019 2098
Table A1.9 Interview questions. As interviews were semi-strutured, the phrasing and order of
questions asked were not identifical for each participant. Follow up prompts (e.g how/why)
were used to gain more indepth responses.
Interview questions
How long have you lived in Menindee/this region?
Is Menindee Lakes important to you and your community?
Tell me about your experience living in Menindee/this region?
How do you use the Menindee Lakes?
What changes to the Darling River and the Menindee lakes have you seen in your lifetime?
How important are native fish to you and your community?
Have you noticed any changes in the numbers and type of native fish?
Have these changes affected you and your community?
Do you think these changes (if any) will affect your community in the future?
What are the most significant of these changes on you?
Do you know anything about the government’s proposed changes to the Menindee Lakes?
If so, what do you think about these proposed changes?
Is there anything you would change about these the proposed plans?
Menindee Lakes rely upon flows from the Darling River, what do you think about changes
to the river upstream of Menindee?
How do you think these issues should be addressed?
Broken Hill once relied upon Menindee Lakes for its main water supply, what do you think
about the solution of the pipeline from the River Murray?
Are you involved in any of the groups that the government has established to consult the
public?
Are you satisfied with the way your community has been consulted about changes to the
river and Menindee Lakes in the past?
how/why?
Do you think there is sufficient information provided about these changes and what they
will mean for the lakes?
Is there anything you would change about how your community was engaged in the
development of these changes?
Appendix 2

Table A2.1 Chi-squared goodness of fit tests for given probabilities between themes
discussed by interviewees. Sample sizes were sufficiently large for χ2 statistic to be
compared. Observations were classified independently.

Theme Residuals X-squared df p-value

Farmer Community Traditional
Owner
Cultural -2.83 -2.40 5.23 41.23 2 <0.01*
Ecological 2.4 -0.67 -1.68 9 2 0.01*
Gov. 0.4 1.34 -1.74 5.01 2 0.08
Management
Hydrological 1.43 0.30 -1.77 5.4 2 0.07
Social -1.11 4.27 -3.15 29.4 2 <0.01*
*p=0.05

Table A2.2 List of themes and issues, with code definitions and percents within transcripts.

Theme Issue Code (%) & Definition

Allocation of Water (3) - Allocations of water

through the Barwon-Darling WSP
Broken Hill pipeline (5) - The consolation process
and decision to construct the Broken Hill pipeline
Consultation Process (11) - Dissatisfaction with
the government consultation process for the
Menindee SDLAM project (e.g accessibility, what
parts of community were involved, whether
community knowledge/needs were incorporated
into decision making)
Evaporative Savings (2) - The proposed plan for
saving water by reducing evaporative losses for
Government
Government Management the lakes
Management
Holistic management (1) - Managing both
upstream and downstream systems as a whole
Information basis (3) - The information basis for
government management decisions
Institutional Complexity (2) - The complexity of
different scales of governance for the Lakes
Issues of trust (11) - Community distrust/trust of
government decision making and genuine
engagement with communities.
Public vs Private Gain (1) - Criticism that
government water reform resulted in private gains
at public cost (infrastructure subsidises)
 Regulation of water use (1) - Regulation of
allocated water use by government
Water diversions (1) - Water diversions from the
Darling (Illegal)
Water Sharing Plan (2) - Changes to allocations of
water through the Menindee Lakes WSP
Changes to flooding events (1) - Changes in the
frequency of flooding events for the Darling and
Menindee Lakes
Changes to flows (4) - Changes to flows for the
Darling and Menindee Lakes
Water Quality (2) - Changes in water quality for
Hydrology
the Darling and Menindee Lakes
Connectivity (2) - Connectivity between different
parts of the Lower Darling
Evaporative Losses (2) - The evaporative losses
from the Lakes as serving an ecological function
for the Lower Darling.
Ecological Processes (2) - Reduced ability of
Menindee Lakes and Darling river to support
ecological processes in general
Aesthetic (1) - Changes to the aesthetic value of
the Darling River and Menindee Lakes.
Number of fish (3) - Reduced abundance of fish in
the Darling or Menindee Lakes over time.
Water
Types of fish (1) - Change in types of fish in the
Ecosystem
Darling or Menindee Lakes (reduced presence of
Services
Ecology locally important species i.e Golden Perch)
Fish Kill (2) - The series of fish kills at Menindee
in 2019/2020 in reference to flows
Other Ecological Changes (5) - Other ecological
changes witnesses in the Darling and Menindee
Lakes.
Ecosystem Services (3) - Changes to the
ecological services that the Menindee Lakes or the
Darling river provide to surrounding communities
(e.g water supply)
Activity (4) - Reduced access to sites on the
Darling and Menindee Lakes to connect and care
for country
Artistic (0) - Reduced access to artistic resources
Cultural from the environment (e.g. mussels shells)
Place based Education (1) - Ability to use sites to
practice place based education
Identity (1) - Existence and protection of
Barkandji cultural identity
 Knowledge (3) - Lack of recognition and
incorporation of Barkandji knowledge in decision-
making.
Right to water (1) - Lack of cultural flows and
recognition of Barkandji customary rights to water
Sites (1) - Reduced access, protection and lack of
recognition of cultural heritage sites.
Spiritual (1) - No recognition and protection of
story places
Community Services (0) - Reduced community
services e.g. RTCs, local health clinics for
Menindee town.
Community Identity (3) - The role the Darling and
Menindee Lakes has in how the broader
Water community identifies itself
Ecosystem Community Health (4) - Aspects of the mental
Services and physical health of the community
(Con.) Employment (1) - Reduced local employment
opportunities.
Local Economic Activity (3) - Recued economic
activity in the area surrounding the Menindee
Lakes and Darling River (e.g fruit picking, local
Social
businesses closing)
Population Declines (0) - Declines in the local
populations for Menindee.
Recreation (4) - Changes to the usage of the
Menindee Lakes and the Darling for recreational
purposes e.g. fishing, swimming due to the
condition of the Lakes/River.
Social Cohesion (0) - Co-operation between
different parts of the community in engaging with
government consultation.
Tourism (2) - Reduced local tourism for the
Menindee lakes and the Darling with the
reduction in flows and flooding events.
 Table A2.3 List of online survey questions, organised by theme with response types from
seven-point Likert scales and quantity.

Question Response (number responses) 18 total.

Water Have you noticed any environmental change A great deal (5)
Ecosystem to the Darling River and the Menindee lakes A lot (5)
Services while living in Menindee/Broken Hill?
How would you respond to the statement: Strongly agree (15)
“Changes to the management of Menindee Agree (2)
Lakes has degraded the environment” Strongly disagree (1)
How would you respond to the statement: Strongly disagree (17)
"Changes to the management of Menindee Disagree (1)
Lakes have benefitted my community"
How would you respond to the statement: Strongly agree (17)
"Management changes to Menindee Lakes Strongly disagree (1)
are likely to impact my community in the
future"
How important are native fish to you and Extremely important (18)
your community?
Have you noticed any changes in the Strongly agree (13)
numbers and types of native fish in your Agree (5)
area?
How important are waterbirds to your Extremely important (17)
community? Moderately important (1)
Have you noticed any changes in the Strongly agree (11)
numbers and types of waterbirds in your Agree (6)
area? Somewhat agree (1)
Government The government has future plans for Yes (11)
Management Menindee Lakes. Do you know about these No (7)
proposed changes to the Lakes?
(If Yes) Do you agree with these proposed Strongly disagree (6)
changes? Somewhat disagree (1)
Menindee Lakes rely upon flows from the Strongly disagree (13)
Darling River, do you agree with changes Somewhat agree (1)
that have been made to the river in the past?
Broken Hill once relied upon Menindee Strongly disagree (10)
Lakes for its main water supply. Do you Disagree (1)
agree with the solution of a pipeline from the Somewhat disagree (1)
River Murray to supply water for Broken Hill Strongly agree (4)
instead? Somewhat disagree (2)
How would you respond to the statement: Strongly disagree (16)
"My community has been sufficiently Disagree (2)
consulted about changes to the Darling River
and Menindee Lakes in the past"
How would you respond to the statement: Strongly disagree (13)
"The Government has provided sufficient Somewhat disagree (3)
information about changes to Menindee Disagree (2)
Lakes"
How would you respond to the statement: Strongly disagree (13)
"there was significant information provided Disagree (3)
before comments from the community on Somewhat disagree (1)
these changes were sought out" Strongly agree (1)