They have been forced to try to make the NSW Department of Planning, Industry and Environment understand how restricting their ability to irrigate - especially in times of low rainfall and high temperatures - would kill their crops, make their businesses unviable and lead to a shortage of local produce for the community.

In a meeting with six department staff on February 15 over the draft replacement water sharing plan for the Hunter Unregulated and Alluvial Water Source 2022, farmers explained how vegetable crops needed frequent short periods of water to survive.

Under the proposed restrictions, farmers on the tidal pool of the Hunter River, Paterson River and Wallis Creek would not be able to irrigate once the salinity level at Green Rocks, near Millers Forest, reached 4000. That would happen even if the salinity upstream was much less.

If that rule had been in place three years ago, farmers would not have been allowed to irrigate for almost four months straight.

Water NSW data shows the salinity level at Green Rocks was above 4000 every day between October 11, 2019 and February 9, 2020.

During that time there were 28 days over 35 degrees, and the mix of high temperatures, low rainfall and low soil moisture would have seen every single vegetable crop perish. It would also have killed off every other type of crop.

For the four generations of the Osborn family, who have been farming in Pitnacree for close to a century, the government's plan is diabolical.

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"They've got no idea," Roger Osborn, 66, who has been farming all of his life, said.

"In times like that, when there are hot days and it's summer we can be irrigating 24/7 to water all of our crops. That four-month ban would have killed us.

"We grow the most during summer and if you don't give the crops the water they need they will wilt and die."

The Mercury asked the NSW Department of Planning Industry and Environment what research it had done to determine the irrigation needs of various types of farming - including vegetables - when it was considering placing a Cease to Pump function in the plan.

The Mercury also asked the department if it felt it understood the irrigation needs of various types of farming. It had not responded when The Mercury went to print.

East Maitland farmer Matthew Dennis agrees he would have been out of business had the restrictions been in place in the spring and summer of 2019-2020.

"We have to water them frequently, they come here as transplants with a tiny root system and we need to keep the water up to them to keep them growing," he said.

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