Communication Alert from MDBA below

The Murray-Darling Basin Authority will be releasing the draft Basin Plan on Monday, 28 November 2011. This will mark the beginning of the formal public consultation period.

The formal consultation period will go for 20 weeks and will give people the opportunity to read the draft plan, discuss it with their community, discuss it with us and provide feedback via our formal submission process. The closing date for submissions will be the 16th April 2012.

This public consultation builds on the many meetings we have held over the past few months by providing a range of ways for people to meet and ask questions.

Many people told us they don't want to have meetings immediately after the draft plan is available, so we are starting our meetings the week after the draft goes out.

From 5 to 16 December 2011 we will hold open public meetings in some areas where there is likely to be more water recovery needed:

• St George (7 December)
• Murray Bridge (9 December)
• Shepparton (13 December)
• Griffith (15 December)
• Deniliquin (16 December).

Alongside the public meetings we will also hold smaller meetings with community and representative groups in those and other towns.

We will be continuing consultations after Australia Day - we added an extra four weeks to the consultation period to allow for this.

Next year we will be looking at visiting Goondiwindi, Mildura, Renmark and Swan Hill. Again, we'll be holding smaller meetings for detailed conversations in those towns as well as in a range of other places such as Hay, Albury, Wodonga, and Narrabri.

We are keen to talk to anyone who is interested and will schedule meetings as needed. As we do schedule more public meetings those details will go up on our website.

What we are releasing

As mentioned, on Monday we will be releasing the draft Basin Plan for 20 weeks formal consultation. To help people understand the legislative document and our proposals, we are releasing a number of supporting documents. Some products will be released on Monday, while others will be released in the coming weeks.

A factsheet will be available on Monday explaining the documents we are producing, however we thought you might like a summary beforehand:

• The proposed Basin Plan - a draft for consultation
• Plain English summary of the proposed Basin Plan - including explanatory notes
• Delivering a Healthy Working Basin - about the draft Basin Plan
• The draft Basin Plan - catchment by catchment
• Environmental Watering Plan - what's in it and how will it work?
• Environmentally sustainable level of take for surface water: methods and outcomes
• Socioeconomic analysis and the draft Basin Plan
• Science review
• a series of factsheets discussing topics such as hydrological modelling and the Basin Plan implementation process

What's next

When we release the draft plan on Monday, you will be able to access the relevant documents on our website. You will also be able to find details of how you can be involved and how you can make a submission. Specific details of the public meetings will be published on our website as they are confirmed.