Sustainable management
Groundwater has too often been seen as a resource that can be drawn on when surface water is scarce. However groundwater is not an infinite resource, and its connectivity with surface water resources means that care must be taken to ensure that both groundwater and surface water supplies are not unsustainably 'mined'.
Overallocation and overuse
A lack of resourcing for the management, measurement and monitoring of a number of groundwater systems in Australia has led to too many licences being issued (overallocation) and in some cases too much groundwater being extracted (overuse).
This has been made worse by:
- licensed groundwater usage not being metered in many parts of Australia
- provision of free or under-priced groundwater
- failure of management plans to recognise the connectivity of groundwater and surface water.
Understanding groundwater resources
Australia's groundwater resources are not well understood. Forming a clearer understanding of groundwater is made more difficult by the fact that every aquifer is different.
Projects being undertaken through the $82 million National Groundwater Action Plan, initiated by the National Water Commission in 2007, will improve our knowledge and understanding of groundwater and put us in a better position to manage our groundwater resources.
Sustainable groundwater management and water reform
To guarantee groundwater resources for the future, we need to ensure that we do not extract groundwater faster than it can be replenished.
One of the objectives of the National Water Initiative (NWI) is to return all currently overallocated or overused systems to environmentally-sustainable levels of extraction. This objective underpins many of the activities relating to groundwater being undertaken by the National Water Commission.
The NWI defines environmentally sustainable level of extraction as: the level of water extraction from a particular system which, if exceeded would compromise key environmental assets, or ecosystem functions and the productive base of the resource.
Science to underpin sustainability
A major impediment to the sustainable management of groundwater is that Australia's groundwater resources are not well understood. Forming a clearer understanding of groundwater is made more difficult by the fact that every aquifer is different.
Projects being undertaken through the $82 million National Groundwater Action Plan, initiated by the National Water Commission in 2007, will improve our knowledge and understanding of groundwater and put us in a better position to manage our groundwater resources.