Bundalong region business owners plan to fight a proposed restriction on wakeboarding they say will decimate the area.
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Bundalong Tavern owner Brett Butler said the economic impact of any ban would outweigh its effect on erosion.
“This whole town’s based on tourism, we only really survive on families and boating,” he said. “It’s a pretty easy option to say it’s the wakeboarders that are doing the damage but we’ve got evidence to say that it’s not.”
The Murray River (Corowa to Ovens junction) draft erosion management plan has raised concerns ahead of its release for public comment on Friday.
Both Roads and Maritime Services and Murray Darling Basin Authority have invited people to take part in the coming consultation.
Boating Industry Association of Victoria’s Ben Scullin met with business owners in Bundalong on Monday to discuss his research.
Mr Scullin said the authorities seemed to think a trial ban for three to five years would only produce a minimal effect on the economy.
“We’re saying from the industry perspective that the impact will be from Albury to Melbourne,” he said.
“It’s marked, it’s such an important activity and a major component of the river use in this river. We feel that it’s the wrong way around to implement a ban and then see what happens.”
Peter O’Neill, of Skin, Ski and Surf in Yarrawonga, said a three-year restriction “potentially ruins a couple of towns”.
“It will shut my business,” he said. “It’s not just wakeboarders that won’t come, it’s families who wakeboard and waterski and tube and knee board.
“They’ll all go, ‘I can’t wakeboard there, so why bother going there, I’ll go somewhere where I can do everything’.
“I think the people imposing this ban haven’t thought it through at all. Let’s make sure that we put down this notion that no, you can’t shut down our river.”
Murray Darling Basin Authority executive director, river management, Andrew Reynolds said the authority would assess all feedback.
“We are, without doubt, very keen to undertake this trial, so we would expect that we will trial some form of restriction but … we’ll have to weigh up whether what we’ve proposed is still the appropriate thing to do,” Mr Reynolds said.
