ALMOST half the water entitlements purchased under the national Murray-Darling rescue plan last financial year will never reach the distressed Murray system except in times of flood.

New figures reveal the Rudd government made NSW’s Lachlan, Gwydir and Macquarie catchments the top targets for its big-spending buyback program in 2008-09, despite the fact that they all terminate in wetlands.

About 182,000 of the 397,000 megalitres of water entitlements bought across the basin last financial year are now confined to catchments that rarely flow into the main Murray system, which has been devastated by drought and over-extraction.

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NSW Irrigators Council chief executive Andrew Gregson said there seemed no logic to Canberra’s pursuit of cheaper and less reliable water entitlements in unconnected catchment areas.

“It’s reflective of the lack of a strategy,” he said. “What are you trying to achieve, therefore what are you trying to buy?”

The controversial buyback program, worth $3.1 billion over 10 years, has been fast-tracked to claw back water for the thirsty environment.

Storages across the Murray-Darling Basin are at just 11 per cent of capacity after nine heartbreakingly dry years.

Inflows for 2008-09 were the third-lowest in 118 years of records, with the soil so parched even the runoff from heavy rains in the northern basin have failed to make it south.

But the federal push has struck major resistance from the states, with NSW boycotting further sales to the commonwealth while Victoria’s 4per cent limit on the trading of water out of individual irrigation areas remains in place.

South Australia is pushing ahead with a High Court challenge to the Victorian policy, further undermining Kevin Rudd’s promise to end the blame game on the Murray-Darling system.

The barriers to trade have limited the purchase options, with the latest federal Water Department statistics showing many of the 2008-09 entitlements come from some of the basin’s least reliable water sources.

The Lachlan, Gwydir and Macquarie purchases, for example, which cost taxpayers about $260 million in total, will deliver the government its full water entitlements only three to four years out of 10.

By comparison, only a fifth of the entitlements bought by the commonwealth in 2008-09 were “high security”, giving it full flows for at least nine out of 10 years.

And Australian Conservation Foundation healthy rivers campaigner Arlene Buchan said those reliability estimates were already out of date, because they failed to take account of climate change.

“That’s really where the rubber hits the road – will the entitlements bought deliver real water to the environment in 20 years’ time?” she said.

A spokeswoman for federal Water Minister Penny Wong yesterday defended the selections made in the buyback program, citing a landmark CSIRO audit of the basin which rated the Gwydir and Lachlan catchments as in poor and very poor health respectively.

She said both included wetland sites that were recognised as nationally or internationally important and provided homes for threatened or migratory species.

“The water acquired through the purchase program will be managed by the Commonwealth Environmental Water Holder and delivered to the sites that deliver the greatest environmental benefits at the time when allocations become available to these entitlements,” she said. But as of July 3, the Environmental Water Holder had only 64,000 megalitres at its disposal, about a sixth of the 2008-09 buyback total. Less than 10,000ML are understood to have been returned to the environment last financial year.

The department gave no prices, sources or reliability data for more than a quarter of the entitlements bought in the year to June 30 because of privacy reasons, making it impossible to calculate the government’s total spending on the program.

“The commonwealth … is saying they want an open, accountable and transparent (water) market but… are not providing information that’s open, accountable and transparent,” Mr Gregson said.