Water availability
Water availability is one of the three headline parameters that are reported
in AWR 2005. The objective is to provide answers to key questions of water
availability:
- How much water does Australia's systems have?
- When does it become available?
- How much water do we store?
- What is the variability of our water resources between years?
- What are the connections between resources?
This section of the assessment provides high-level management information
relating to water availability for each state and territory in Australia. The
assessment was prepared with significant consultation with state and territory
agencies. It also used existing data that were collected under draft water
availability performance indicators that were developed for agreed water availability
objectives (Paragraph 23 of the Intergovernmental Agreement on a National Water
Initiative (NWI)):
Water is the lifeblood of all Australians
Image by Arthur Mostead, sourced from the Murray-Darling Basin Commission
- Objective (iv) complete the return of all currently overallocated
or overused systems to environmentally sustainable levels of extraction.
Identification of overallocated or overused systems
- Objective (viii) policy settings that facilitate water use
efficiency and innovation in urban and rural areas
- Objective (x) recognise the connectivity between surface and
groundwater resources and connected systems so they can be managed as a
single resource
During the compilation of this information, each state and territory was requested
to provide data that would be compiled into performance indicators and used
to report on the achievement of particular actions.
Related links
The following sections of this assessment summarise the state and territory
responses to surface water and groundwater data that were requested for each
water management area:
- What is our total water
resource
- Information about the total water resource, rainfall distribution,
temperature, evapotranspiration, runoff, groundwater recharge, water
storage, intercepting activities, alternative water sources
- Water balance
assessments
- key volumetric parameters are presented as a water balance, allowing
assessment and comparison of values across and between geographic areas
- Water management
- water management areas with and without surface water management
plans and the status of those plans
- the extent to, and manner in which groundwater was taken into
account in those surface water management plans
- groundwater management units with and without groundwater
management water plans and the status of those plans
- the extent to, and manner in which, surface water was taken
into account in those groundwater management plans
- Water resources caps
- water management areas, both surface and groundwater, in which
water abstraction has been capped and what this means, including discussion
of types of water use within capped areas to which a cap does not apply
- Resource sustainability
- water management areas, both surface and groundwater, for
which the sustainable yield has been determined, and a comparison of the
level of entitlement relative to the sustainable yield
- Surface water and groundwater interaction (conjunctive management
of surface and groundwater)
- responses from surface and groundwater managers on the level
of integration of the management of surface and groundwater management
- Water diversions and extractions
- information on volumes of water diversions (from surface water)
and abstractions (from groundwater) together with information on the source
of this data, which allows an assessment of its accuracy to be made
- Water entitlements
- Information on types of water use that are not regulated by entitlements
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