| |
|
|
All Current and Past Media Releases
|
Media Release - Department of Infrastructure, Planning and Natural Resources Deniliquin: 15 September 2005 MURRAY VALLEY IRRIGATION ALLOCATION RISES Acting Regional Director of the NSW Department of Natural Resources, Kaye Dalton, announced today an increase in NSW general security allocation in the Murray Valley to 30 percent of entitlement. The announcement follows a comprehensive assessment of inflows and water sharing between States to the end of August and a more conservative assessment of inflows to the 15th September.
The increase in water availability for NSW irrigators is a consequence of continuing good rainfall in the catchment areas that has generated good inflows into Hume and Dartmouth dams, and provided tributary inflows into Lake Victoria in western NSW.
“These conditions have enabled general security allocation to increase from 0% this time last month and water availability for NSW should continue to improve with any further rainfall in the coming weeks and months. September and October are typically the wettest months in the Murray Valley, and the time when most inflows and high rivers may be expected.”
NSW irrigators are reminded, however, that under the agreed operating rules for the Barmah-Millewa Forest, any improvement in water availability to NSW now the general security allocation has reached 30 percent of entitlement will be set aside to repay the environmental water account that has previously been reallocated for irrigation. Currently 29 GL has been repaid to the Forest account, a further 246 GL needs to be credited to the account before allocations can be increased. Any further inflows after the environmental entitlement is repaid will be made available for general security use.
Ms Dalton said that the re-allocation of the environmental water allocation under the operating rules for the Forest had provided significant benefit to NSW users in the recent dry years. “More than 500 gigalitres of additional water, the equivalent volume of Sydney Harbour, has been re-allocated for irrigation early in the past 5 irrigation seasons.
Even with the payback of the environmental water, the prospects of general security entitlements increasing during the coming season is good. With a high amount of unused water carried forward from last season, on average 27 percent, general security allocation only has to reach 73 percent before a full 100 percent of entitlement can be announced. If we have long term median inflows from now on, NSW irrigators can expect 100% of entitlement by May 2006
In making the announcement, the Department of Natural Resources had prepared the indicative forecasts of allocation improvements under different climate scenarios.
Condition / Exceedence / Allocation at end Oct / Allocation at end May
Very dry / 90% / 30 / 50 Dry / 75% / 30 / 63 Median / 50% / 39 / 100 * exceedence equals the percentage of years over 113 years of records the level of inflows has been greater than that modelled For further information visit our website at: http://www.dlwc.nsw.gov.au/care/water/rural_water_mngmt/murray.html
© NSW Department of Infrastructure, Planning and Natural Resources
|
|||||||||||||||