Australian Natural Resources Atlas

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Water resources - Overview - Victoria


Location map of SWMA Goulburn River

Basin & Surface Water Management Area: Goulburn River

Introduction

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The Goulburn River Basin is located in central Victoria and is the largest river basin in Victoria. The basin covers an area of 16,858 km2, which represents 7.4% of the State's total area. The topography of the basin varies from the high ranges in the south to the Murray Plain in the north.

The main stream network is the Goulburn River, with major tributaries including the Howqua, Acheron, and Yea Rivers. The Goulburn River extends from the east and flows in a westerly direction through a broad agricultural valley bordered by foothills. Near Seymour the river swings to the north and takes in waters of the streams draining the northern face of the Strathbogie Ranges. The river continues past Shepparton to join the Murray River just upstream of Echuca. The major storages in the basin, which serve the Goulburn Murray Water Irrigation Areas, are Lake Eildon, Goulburn Weir and the Waranga Basin.

The climate is temperate and average rainfall varies greatly across the catchment. The high country in the south-east experiences cool winters with snow falls and an average annual rainfall greater that 1600mm at Mt Buller. Rainfall decreases northward to less than 450 mm/year in the far north of the catchment. This represents only one third of the annual evaporation in that area.

The mean annual flow of the basin is 3,366,000 ML, which represents 16.7% of the total runoff generated in the State.

Most of the catchment has been cleared for agriculture, with some native vegetation being retained in the far south. Major land uses include hardwood timber production in the south-east and dairying and fruit production in the north.

There are several large rural cities including Shepparton, Mooroopna, Seymour and Kyabram.

Average annual surface water use is 919,770 ML with urban/industrial representing 3% of total use, irrigation 94%, and rural 3%. Of the total water use, 7,400 ML is diverted from the Murray River for rural and irrigation use. The remaining volume is diverted from the basin resources. (Note: The reported volume of water used represents the total water consumed within the basin. This includes the water imported from other SWMAs. It does not include the water that is harvested within the SWMA and exported for use by consumers in other SWMAs. This estimate of water use does not account for the volume of reclaimed or returned water).

An additional 1,030,600 ML is withdrawn from the Basin's surface water resources for export to the Broken, Campaspe, and Loddon River Basins.

Vital Statistics:

Area: 16,858 Km2
Total storage volume: 3,843,906
Total surface water use: 919,770 ML/yr
Development category: FULL DEVELOPMENT
Mean annual run-off: 3,366,000 ML/yr

A four-class classification system was developed to provide a simple method to communicate the status of the use and allocation of Australia's water resources in relation to sustainable water management.

It is important to recognise that adequately quantifying a sustainable flow regime or sustainable yield and consequent operating rules is a complex matter. State, Territory and scientific agencies continue to develop and apply methods and measures for determining sustainable flow regimes and sustainable yields.

This categorisation provides a general guide only. Please refer to the State and Territory Overview and Technical reports for detail on the analysis methods used.

CategoryDevelopment status
1<30% Low development
230 - 70% Moderate development
370 - 100% Highly developed
4100% Overdeveloped

* Water use as a percentage of sustainable flow regime (surface water) and sustainable yield (groundwater)

PLEASE NOTE:

Sustainable Yield:

While Victoria has a variety of programs under way aimed at identifying, improving and protecting environmental water requirements, the necessary investigations take considerable time and resources.

Given the short time frame of the Audit, it was necessary to make some broad assumptions, and use a variety of approaches, to derive estimates of the sustainable yield for surface water management areas (SWMAs) in Victoria. Consideration was given to environmental water requirements (known and likely), existing user rights, and related social and economic impacts. The reported allocations to the environment represent the water that can currently be maintained or made available in an attempt to meet environmental water requirements.

Within the Murray Darling Basin, sustainable yields were determined in the context of the 1996 agreement to cap diversions within the Basin at 1993/94 levels of development. By ensuring that diversions in the Murray-Darling Basin will not increase, the Cap protects the security of supply of existing users at a regional scale while, in effect, defining the remaining water as an environmental allocation. The sustainable yields for the SWMAs located within the Basin were reported as the average annual diversions from each SWMA with the Cap in place. The average annual diversions were estimated using water resource allocation models (REALM) of the relevant water supply systems. It should be noted that the Cap is a critical first step in countering ecological degradation. To halt degradation fully it may need to be lowered (and therefore sustainable yields may need to be redefined), but it is too early to tell whether this is the case.

This approach assumes that the current environmental water provisions represent the maximum volume of water that can currently be made available to the environment after consideration is given to the rights of existing users, and related social and economic impacts. In some situations these provisions may not fully meet the environments requirements.

In the longer term, there may be further scope for freeing up additional water to improve environmental regimes by improving distribution and water use efficiencies (other options for improving environmental regimes will be considered as part of the Victorian River Health Strategy). In SWMAs where a significant portion of the available resource is committed to a downstream SWMA, there is also potential for trading of entitlements between the two SWMAs. This will result in a change to both the sustainable yield and the environmental allocation in both SWMAs. Trade out of a SWMA would decrease the sustainable yield of the SWMA and a trade of water rights into a SWMA would increase the sustainable yield. However, the sum of the sustainable yields for the two SWMAs would remain unchanged.

PLEASE NOTE:

Categorisation:

The categorisation of SWMAs in terms of the current level of water resource development has been determined with consideration given to the level of allocation and actual diversion of the resource relative to the assessed sustainable yield.

Five development categories have been defined: 

 Category 1: Low level of development: 0-30% Category 2: Medium level of development: 31-70% Category 3: High level of development: 71-99% Category 3*: Fully developed: 100% Category 4: Over allocated/used resource: >100%

The development category for the Goulburn River Basin has been reported as fully developed (Category 3*) with respect to both allocation and diversion. This is consistent with the Murray-Darling Basin Cap, which sets the average allocation to equal the volume of water that would have been diverted under 1993/94 levels of development. This means that any further surface water-based development in the Basin can only be achieved via trading of water rights, via water savings achieved through improvements in distribution and water-use efficiency, or via use of alternative sources of water (e.g. reclaimed water).

How saline are the surface water resources in the Goulburn River surface water management area?

Table: Surface water resource by salinity class.

Total Volume, Divertible Yield (ML/Yr)
Total volume (ML/yr), DIVERSION2,477,000
<500 mg/l (ML/yr)2,477,000
500 mg/l (ML/yr) - 1500 mg/l (ML/yr)no data
1500 mg/l (ML/yr) - 5000 mg/l (ML/yr)no data
5000 mg/l (ML/yr) - 14000 mg/l (ML/yr)no data
> 14000 mg/l (ML/yr)no data

Major water storages

Table: Major water storage areas:

Storage name: Capacity (ML)
Wallaby Creek Weirno data
Polly McQuinn Weir136
Waterhouse Dam250
No. 3 Storage40
Ritchie Reservoir180
Sunday Creek Reservoir1,700
Eildon3,390,000
Eildon Pondage Weir5,200
Goulburn Weir35,400
Waranga Basin 411,000
Total3,843,906

Further Information

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