Water

Water allocations increase slightly

By Geoff Adams

Jan 17, 2025

Small increases in allocations for Victorian and NSW irrigators released. Photo by Contributed

Campaspe system irrigators will be able to use more water after incremental increases in the seasonal determination.

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The northern Victoria resource manager has increased the seasonal allocation from 47 per cent of low-reliability water shares to 48 per cent, in addition to 100 per cent of high-reliability water shares.

The Bullarook system seasonal determination increases from seven per cent high-reliability to 12 per cent.

Seasonal determinations for high-reliability in the Murray, Goulburn and Loddon systems are unchanged at 100 per cent.

In the Broken system, seasonal determinations remain at 100 per cent for HRW and 100 per cent low-reliability.

Resource manager Andrew Shields said recent rainfall provided the resource for the small water availability improvement.

“Rainfall at Lake Eppalock and the Bullarook storages since the last assessment meant the evaporation losses were lower than our estimates,” Mr Shields said.

“This increased the amount of water available for allocation in the Campaspe and Bullarook systems.”

In the NSW Murray district, general security irrigators have received an increase of five per cent.

This takes the cumulative allocation to 58 per cent.

The average carryover from last year has been 40 per cent of entitlement.

The Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water reported recent inflows into the upstream dams had significantly improved resources.