Water legislation and policies
Managing NSW's water resources is a huge task, involving a range of legislation, initiatives and cooperative arrangements with the Commonwealth and other state government departments. The two key pieces of legislation for the management of water in NSW are the Water Management Act 2000 and the Water Act 1912.
The Water Management Act 2000
The object of the Water Management Act 2000 is the sustainable and integrated management of the State's water for the benefit of both present and future generations.
After an extensive period of public consultation, the Water Management Act 2000 was passed by the NSW Parliament in December 2000 establishing a complete new statutory framework for managing water in NSW. For the first time, NSW had comprehensive water legislation to guide our water management activities.
The Act is based on the concept of ecologically sustainable development – development today that will not threaten the ability of future generations to meet their needs. The Act recognises that:
- the fundamental health of our rivers and groundwater systems and associated wetlands, floodplains, estuaries has to be protected
- the management of water must be integrated with other natural resources such as vegetation, soils and land
- to be properly effective, water management must be a shared responsibility between the government and the community
- water management decisions must involve consideration of environmental, social, economic, cultural and heritage aspects
- social and economic benefits to the State will result from the sustainable and efficient use of water
The Water Management Act 2000 was driven by the need for NSW to secure a sustainable basis for water management for several reasons:
- NSW was at the limits of its available water resources – new licences for commercial purposes could no longer be issued across most of NSW and a limit had been placed on the total volume of water that can be extracted across the inland of NSW under the Murray–Darling Basin Cap
- The decline in the health of our rivers, groundwater, floodplains and estuaries was being seen through increasing water quality problems, loss of species, wetland decline and habitat loss.
As a result the Act recognises the need to allocate and provide water for the environmental health of our rivers and groundwater systems, while also providing licence holders with more secure access to water and greater opportunities to trade water in particular through the separation of water licences from land. The main tool the Act provides for managing the State's water resources are water sharing plans. These are used to set out the rules for the sharing of water in a particular water source between water users and the environment and rules for the trading of water in a particular water source.
Statutory water sharing plans are required which set out the rules for water users and the environment and for water trading. Since the legislation was passed in 2000 some amendments have been necessary to better implement the new arrangements and also give effect to the National Water Initiative signed on 25 June 2004, including creation of perpetual or open-ended water licences. The Act was also amended in 2008 to strengthen compliance and enforcement powers in response to water theft. The latest copy of the Water Management Act 2000 is available from the NSW government legislation site.
Because of the major changes required by the legislation, the Act has been progressively implemented. Since 1 July 2004 the new licensing and approvals system has been in effect in those areas of NSW covered by operational water sharing plans – these areas cover most of the State's major regulated river systems and therefore the largest areas of water extraction. As water sharing plans are finalised and commenced for the rest of the state, the licensing provisions of the Act are introduced extending the benefits for the environment of defined environmental rules and for licence holders of perpetual water licences and greater opportunities for water trading.
Supporting statutes for the Water Management Act 2000
To assist in implementing and defining the provisions of the Act, regulations and proclamations and orders are also made.
The Regulation
The Water Management (General) Regulation 2004
- contains various procedural matters
- specifies exemptions from the need to hold an access licence or an approval in certain circumstances
- specifies the changeover formulae applying to the new category of supplementary water access licences (formerly off–allocation water)
- includes further minor amendments made to the regulation in April 2005.
Proclamations and Orders
On 30 June 2004 the Governor made a proclamation (PDF 56 KB) which commenced the access licence and works and use approvals provisions of the Water Management Act 2000 for the water sources covered by the first wave of water sharing plans to commence.
The Minister can publish orders to implement specific details of an Act. For the Water Management Act 2000 these include:
The following order was also made under the Rivers and Foreshores Improvement Act 1948:
The order dealing with the harvestable rights provisions of the Water Act 1912 was amended in March 2006 to support the provisions under the Water Management Act. This order establishes the definitions of a river, the stream ordering requirements of the harvestable rights (using the Strahler system) and identifies the topographical maps which may be used to determine the harvestable right for a landholding.
Water Act 1912
The Water Act 1912 came into force at the turn of the last century and represented a different era in water management in NSW. This Act is being progressively phased out and replaced by the Water Management Act 2000, but some provisions are still in force. A copy of the Water Act 1912 is available from the NSW's Government legislation website.
Generally, new or expanding businesses requiring groundwater in inland NSW now need to obtain it from an existing licence holder. Trading is permitted only where transfers are consistent with the Policy for groundwater transfers in inland NSW outside water sharing plan areas. For more information see the Guideline to the policy for groundwater transfers in inland NSW outside water sharing plan areas (PDF 85 KB)
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