Water planning and management
Investments to achieve more effective planning and management on the ground, including greater involvement by the community, including indigenous communities, in water planning in rural/regional and metropolitan areas.
Announced projects include:
Improving Aboriginal involvement and representation in water management and planning processes in NSW.
Collating Aboriginal information to inform the development and review of water sharing plans in NSW.
Undertaking a series of think pieces and options papers on national issues affecting Indigenous water access and management.
This project creates a funding program to assist Australia's state and territories to improve their water allocation planning. Under the program, jurisdictions will identify barriers to planning, and then develop and manage projects to overcome these.
Investigating emerging issues and options for incorporating the water used by the mining sector and associated access regimes into water planning and water access entitlement processes.
An enduring legacy commensurate with Peter Cullen's contribution to freshwater ecology, to science communication and to water research, policy and management in Australia.
Improving knowledge of low flows including flow rates, surface and groundwater drivers, spatial distribution, pool persistence, ecosystem responses, modelling, and predictive tools. This project is also listed under the water planning and management theme.
Establishing a national inventory of stressed catchments and aquifers, based on a nationally consistent set of criteria and published data. This project is also listed under the national assessment and water planning and management themes.
Assisting National Water Initiative partners to incorporate potential climate change impacts in their regional water allocation planning processes.
Supporting Indigenous involvement in national water management by establishing a National Indigenous Reference Group.
The Australian Government is contributing funds to the Northern Territory Government to employ an Indigenous water planner for two years. The water planner will develop a water allocation plan for the Tiwi Islands where there are forestry and groundwater extraction pressures on the resource.
To develop a comprehensive Water Resource Observation Network (WRON) compliant decision support system for the improved management of water use and flows in the Condamine-Balonne catchment over the next three years.
Bringing together Indigenous people and jurisdictional water planners to identify and document good examples of Indigenous engagement in water planning processes.
Assessing the risk of new plantations to water access entitlements by providing daily water yield predictions and to accurately quantify the site-scale impacts of new plantations on stream flows.
Developing a common framework for estimating catchment water yield and daily runoff characteristics, and the impacts of various drivers such as climate change, afforestation/land use change and farm dams, on catchment water yield.
Developing a national baseline of the status of major forms of activities that have the potential to intercept significant volumes of groundwater and/or surface water.
Investigating the impact of changed water availability on electricity generation in Australia.
Addressing the divergent interpretations and implementation of the terms "sustainable levels of extraction" and "over-allocation" that are currently used in water planning and management across Australia.
Improving the way in which water planning is undertaken across Australia.
Revising key documents, including aspects of the Australian Drinking Water Guidelines, and develop an information package, including materials such as diagrams, maps, and tables, that assists with preparing usable and understandable drinking water management plans.
Undertaking a national risk assessment to identify key opportunities for improving drinking water management in remote Indigenous communities.
Providing one point of contact for modelling systems for use in the different water planning processes across Australia.
Reviewing a range of current water plans and identify lessons learned during the planning process to improve our future water management planning.
Examining a number of priority water governance issues that are impacting on the achievement of National Water Initiative outcomes, and examine how, over time, better practice water governance arrangements can be encouraged and implemented across Australia.
Supporting a range of activities to address specific areas identified for attention under the National Water Initiative.
Developing specifications for new water entitlements that would be required for various new water products likely to be introduced into the water market in the near future. This project is also listed under the emerging water markets theme.