1.3.3.2 Gaps

Groundwater and surface water entitlement volumes may not represent total extraction due to the exclusions that exist under NSW’s Water Management Act 2000, where entitlements are not required for stock/domestic and other low risk activities for surface water and groundwater (NSW Government, 2015).

Basic landholder rights (i.e. basic water rights) for surface water were extracted from the NSW Office of Water, Water Sharing Planning website in June 2014 (Bureau of Meteorology, Dataset 3) and for groundwater in October 2013 (NSW Office of Water, Dataset 4). The total basic water right entitlements are expected not to change significantly on a yearly basis, therefore the difference in timing is considered immaterial.

The water sharing plan dataset was reduced to include only water sources which are part of a finalised WSP (i.e. those having a formally identified volume and/or take). Water sources that do not have an identified volume under a plan were not included in the asset database. Therefore, the total number and/or volume of groundwater entitlements is expected to vary when the water source areas are excluded.

The surface water access entitlement data received from NSW Office of Water do not include details of the river reaches where the offtakes are located; instead they include the water source and water management zone associated with the WSP. A water source can be any set of rivers, aquifers or lakes and the like, which are defined by a gazetted WSP to be a water source. Therefore when the elements are aggregated into the asset, water access entitlements are grouped together across the water source area (a large polygon). This will need to be taken into account when assigning receptor locations as the water source may include multiple river reaches and potentially multiple river branches.

Last updated:
18 January 2019