Australian Natural Resources Atlas

Natural Resource Topics

Water resources - Overview - New South Wales


Location Map of NSWNo photo caption available

New South Wales

New South Wales water resources - at a glance

On average New South Wales uses 10,000 GL of water per year, which is 42% of Australia's total use. Of the total water use, 9000 GL of water is used from surface water sources and 9825 GL of surface water is allocated to consumptive use.

1008 GL of water is used from groundwater sources. The sustainable yield of groundwater for New South Wales is 6200 GL per year which is 21% of Australia's total.

29 of the 54 Surface Water Management Areas and 10 of the 50 groundwater management units are assessed as being highly or overdeveloped.

Map of New South Wales's surface water management areas

Select a surface water management area on the map to find out more about that area.

Map of New South Wales's surface water management areas
Map of New South Wales's groundwater provinces

Select a groundwater province on the map to find out more about that area.

Map of New South Wales's Groundwater Provinces

Overview

Water is a fundamental requirement for New South Wales' economic growth, its natural ecology and the community's life style and values.

In 1995 NSW embarked on a major program of water reform. The reforms have three goals:

NSW is in the midst of implementing the reform initiatives. A key element of the change is the decision to provide an environmental flow share over the full range of flows in rivers. NSW adopted this approach as it considered that environmental flow shares could not be confined to low flows if the needs of the Australian water ecology are to be adequately addressed. Rather, NSW has used a range of hydrologic measures other than average or median flows to adequately reflect the unique features of Australian stream-flow. NSW is in the process of developing many of the initiatives and they are utilising a significant portion of government resources. As a result some of the reporting requirements of the National Land and Water Resources Audit cannot be fully met at this stage. Investigations are underway to see if, as the valley specific initiatives in the State are completed, the relevant information can be added to the Atlas.

The NSW Water Reform environmental flow strategies for the inland basins include the requirements of the Murray Darling Basin Commission (MDBC) cap, which limits water use to the level of development that was achieved in 1994. In fact in the inland basins, the Water Reform initiatives will reduce usage below the cap level in many valleys. Potential for development in the inland basins will therefore be limited to that facilitated by water trading or efficiency gains within the user enterprise. For these reasons, users of the Atlas will notice that all management areas within the Murray Darling basin in NSW are shown to have developed yields beyond sustainable levels. Furthermore identification of the surface water development potential on the NSW coastal streams will not possible until such time as flow management plans are developed for each of the coastal valleys.

The main constraint to development of groundwater resources is the extent to which they have already been developed. Allocations in most of the more productive aquifers have already reached or exceeded the estimate of sustainable yield. Constraints to development of other areas are mainly the uncertainty about sustainable yield, the limit to the magnitude of individual bore supplies imposed by the physical characteristics of the aquifer formation and quality of the water. The potential for further development of groundwater resources is in general limited to some of the smaller inland river tributary valleys, some of the coastal sand and alluvial aquifer systems, and the wider areas of the unincorporated areas.

There are 43 AWRC defined river basins in New South Wales and 17 of the 21 basins west of the divide form part of the Murray Darling Basin. On the basis of review done for the Audit all 17 of the basins in the Murray Darling are over committed (use exceeds sustainable yield). Likewise 2 of the 49 groundwater management units (including unincorporated areas) are over committed based on current usage and a further 17 are overcommitted based on allocation.

The key elements of NSW compliance with the principles established in the national water reform agenda include:

Proposals for a new Water Management Act to replace a number of Acts that presently relate to water management in NSW are currently under discussion. This will appoint the Minister for Land and Water Conservation to the role as the states main water manager. The proposal includes provision for ensuring ecologically sustainable outcomes, security for entitlement holders, clearly defined rules and outcomes, community/government partnerships in water management, tradeability, separation of water entitlements from land ownership and streamlining licensing processes.

The water agenda for NSW over the next few years will be focussed on the goals of the reform agenda, namely:

Water Sharing

Support to the Rural Sector

Water Management Partnerships and Improvements


The Australian Natural Resource Atlas contains information about NSW's water resources and in particular it provides information which will help support decision making for ecologically sustainable use of water resources. The information also supports improved water resource efficiency and will help decision-makers assess the influence of environmental, social and economic factors on resource management. Four key areas of interest are summarised at this site and they include:

Surface Water Reporting Units

For this Audit, the 55 surface water management areas, as designated by the DLWC, have been adopted as the reporting unit for NSW. These surface water management areas largely coincide with the old Australian Water Resources Council (AWRC) basins. The only exceptions are the basins within which the Department and the Barwon Darling Management Area operate major storages.

In those basins with major storages the AWRC basin has been further subdivided to distinguish between those parts of the basins in which the DLWC regulates part of the river system to assure supply (regulated basin) and those where it does not (unregulated basin). In a number of the other basins, such as the Hawkesbury-Nepean, Sydney, Shoalhaven and the Snowy, significant regulation is carried out by other agencies but these basins have not been included in the DLWC regulated category. The regulated basins include the Murray-Riverina, Lower Darling, Murrumbidgee, Lachlan, Macquarie, Namoi, Gwydir and Border Rivers within the Murray -Darling basin, and the Bega, Hunter, and Richmond Rivers in coastal NSW.

Groundwater Reporting Units

Groundwater information has been reported at three levels - Groundwater Management Units (GMUs), Unincorporated Areas (UAs), and Provinces. GMUs are those parts of NSW where groundwater usage is intense, has reached or exceeded the most recent estimate of sustainable yield, where this situation is likely to occur if present trends continue, or where groundwater resources are judged to be at risk for any reason. There are 41 GMUs, ranging from as small as 4 km2 to nearly 40 000 km2. The largest GMUs are those in the eastern part of the Murray Basin, where the initial mid 1980s definition of a GMU included a large area in which saline water was dominant. While this tends to skew data for these larger areas, and there is an argument in favour of reducing their size, in practical terms the problem has been dealt with by subdivision of the GMU into zones. Most of the management effort applied is concentrated in those zones in which low salinity water can be obtained.

UAs in NSW are those areas where the degree of management needed is less. UAs constitute the largest part of the State, ranging in size from about 15800 km2 (Clarence Morton, Oxley Basins) to 238000 km2 (Lachlan Fold Belt Province). These areas comprise those parts of the main sedimentary basins and fractured rock provinces which are not included in the GMUs, namely the Clarence-Morton, Oxley, Gunnedah, Sydney and Murray Basins and the New England, Lachlan and Olary fractured rock provinces.

Two other important areas should be noted. The Border Rivers GMU and the Great Artesian Basin Province both cross State borders. Data for both areas have been compiled by the Queensland Department of Natural Resources, using data obtained from the Great Artesian Basin Consultative Committee and Border Rivers Commission respectively. The Great Artesian Basin has been reported based on 13 groundwater management units, three of which are entirely in NSW.

GMUs and UAs have been grouped and/or defined for the purpose of this Audit into province areas. The concept of groundwater provinces was thought in the 1980s to be a logical basis on which to construct a groundwater management regime, and was used as a comparative unit for the 1985 review of Australia's water resources. In the event, however, this has been found impractical and groundwater management units have been defined on a much more detailed basis. Their boundaries are often influenced by, and in large part coincide with, geological features, but are also in large part purely administrative. The concept of groundwater provinces on a regional scale, as suggested by the earlier work, is therefore not regarded as particularly useful, but has been used here so that some comparisons can be made with the 1985 review.

Additional information on NSW Water Reform initiatives and updates on data as basin specific initiatives are implemented can be obtained from the New South Wales Department of Land and Water Conservation web-site at www.dlwc.nsw.gov.au

Further Information

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