Delivering the Murray-Darling Basin Plan

To build infrastructure to mitigate barriers to fish passage in the ACT upper Murrumbidgee at Angle Crossing and at Point Hut Crossing. These sites could be easily opened up for the fish passage over 70Km of river, connecting the upper reaches of the Murrumbidgee to Burrinjuck dam for Murray cod, golden perch and trout cod. Infrastructure could include Box culvert bridge works or rock ramp fishways.

The ACT still is required to deliver water towards meeting the Basin plan under the Bridging the Gap targets and can contribute to the meeting of the 450GL under water efficiencies. The ACT is home to a range of EPBC listed and threatened species outlined to be protected under the international agreements that underpin the Basin Plan.
These species which are commonly supported by Commonwealth environmental water in regions where water can be held and delivered. The upper Murrumbidgee cannot have water delivered and therefore measures such as removing fish barriers to allow for fish will provide strong environmental outcomes and will not require any water to be recovered or immense project costs incurred by SDLAM style works.

Benefits of creating fish passage at Angle Crossing and Point hut Crossing are:
- Allow fish to find refuge during cease to flow events which cannot be mitigated by the lack of holdings and therefore delivery of Commonwealth environmental water.
- Promote genetic diversity within fish species.
- ACT fish passage works will help meet the objectives of the Basin Plan set out in the Environmental Watering Plan (chapter 8)
- Get the best outcomes from unregulated flows within the upper Murrumbidgee.
- Show support for basin areas in often underrepresented areas.
- Research and monitoring are already occurring within the region already, allowing for Flow MER style reporting on the benefits of the work into the future.
- Costs will be small compared to other projects achieves similar environmental outcomes.

There are few challenges to implement this work.
- The ACT Goverment is likely to be supportive of environmental investment in their jurisdiction.
- The implementation of the fish passage works will not impact people's farming operations like in the lower reaches of the MDB.
- Engagement with Icon Water (ACT's water utility provider) may be required as Angle Crossing exists close to some pumping infrasture.
- Public support will most likely be present - as there are not socio-economic downsides to the work.