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Water sharing plans

What is a water sharing plan?

For our river and groundwater systems to be healthy and productive in the long term, it is critical to balance the competing needs of the environment and water users. A water sharing plan is a legal document prepared under the Water Management Act 2000. It establishes rules for sharing water between the environmental needs of the river or aquifer and water users, and also between different types of water users such as town supply, rural domestic supply, stock watering, industry and irrigation.

By setting the rules for how water is allocated for the next ten years, a water sharing plan provides a decade of security for the environment and water users. This not only ensures that, for the first time, water is specifically provided for the environment through a legally binding plan, but also allows licence holders, who require fairly large quantities of water such as irrigators, to better plan their business activities. Irrigation accounts for about 80% of all water used in NSW.

In addition, water sharing plans set rules for water trading, that is, the buying and selling of water licences and also annual water allocations. For most new commercial purposes, water trading remains the only way that water can now be obtained as in most areas of the state as the available water is fully allocated.

The purpose of a water sharing plan is:

to protect the fundamental environmental health of the water source
to ensure that the water source is sustainable in the long-term
to provide water users with a clear picture of when and how water will be available for extraction.

Major elements of a Water Sharing Plan

A water sharing plan:

provides water for the environment by protecting a proportion of the water available for fundamental ecosystem health and/or including specific environmental rules – this is called planned environmental water;
allows licensed water to be committed for environmental purposes – this is called adaptive environmental water which can arise from water recovery projects or by buying water licences;
protects the water required to meet basic landholder rights;
sets annual limits on water extractions to ensure that water extractions do not increase and therefore erode the water for the environment and also the security of supply to water users;
determines what type of additional licences can be granted eg. local water utility access licences (for town water supplies) and Aboriginal cultural access licences;
determines how water is to be shared among the different types of licensed users by setting the priorities of supply eg. in dry periods water for domestic purposes has priority over commercial uses;
provides flexibility for licence holders in the way they can manage their water accounts through aspects such as the ability to carry-over some unused account water or through group rostering;
specifies rules in groundwater plans to minimise impacts on other groundwater users, dependent ecosystems, water quality and the stability of the aquifer;
specifies the rules for water trading(or water dealings);
sets out the mandatory conditions that apply to licence holders;
specifies which parts of the plan can be changed without triggering the compensation provisions of the Act;
sets out the monitoring and reporting requirements, including indicators against which the performance of the plans is to be monitored. The Natural Resources Commission is to review the water sharing plans.

How do these plans provide water for the environment?

Environmental rules for rivers – find out the ways in which the water sharing plans provide water for the environment and some of the results that have been achieved.

Environmental rules for aquifers– find out how we are protecting our aquifers.