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Water legislation and policies

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; and
  • 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. The key parts of the legislation are the new arrangements for licensing water and the statutory water sharing plans.

Since 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 and provision for the term of a water sharing plan to be extended beyond its initial ten years. 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 will also be introduced into the remaining areas of the state extending the benefits for the environment of defined environmental rules and for licence holders of perpetual water licences and greater opportunities for water trading. A paper on Implementing the NSW Water Management Act provides an overview of the new licensing arrangements and how they are being introduced.

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), and
  • includes further minor amendments made to the regulation in April 2005

Proclamations and Orders

On 30 June 2004 the Governor made the proclamation commencing the access licence and works and use approvals provisions of the Water Management Act 2004 in the water sharing plan areas.

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 :

Harvestable Rights – excludes harvestable rights dams, dams approved under the Water Management Act 2000, dams licensed under the Water Act and certain other dams for specific purposes such as soil erosion control, drainage and effluent control and approved environmental management purposes in rural areas from requiring a permit under the Rivers and Foreshores Improvement Act. Permits are still required in certain zoned urban areas.

The following 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.