Sydney
Accountability Statement

1. This water accounting report has been prepared and presented in accordance with the Exposure Draft of Australian Water Accounting Standard 1, with the following exceptions:

• No Assurance Statement was prepared because the practice of assurance of water accounting reports is currently in development.
• Notes on the quantification approaches and levels of uncertainty are incomplete because the knowledge base is often inadequate.
• No information is disclosed about material events that occurred after 30 June 2013, such as extreme precipitation and significant water rights purchases. This information is publicly available elsewhere.
• Asset changes for water stores (surface water, groundwater and urban water) have been included in the Statement of Changes in Water Assets and Water Liabilities, without a corresponding water store asset volume being included in the Statement of Water Assets and Water Liabilities for the following line items:

           – 1.3 Regulated river

           – 1.4 Lakes and wetlands

           – 2.1 Water table aquifer

           – 3.1 Urban water supply scheme

           – 3.2 Wastewater system

           – 3.3 Recycled water system

This is because water store flows and levels could be quantified but storage volumes for these line items could not.

•  The volumes of water assets and water liabilities including the volumes of changes to water assets and water liabilities that failed the recognition criteria were reported in the water accounting statements with dashes ('–') in order to highlight data and knowledge gaps that may affect the water accounting statement balances.
  
• Information on the environmental water outcomes arising from the management of flows under the water sharing plan for the Kangaroo River water source was unavailable at the time of publication.
  

2. The report has been compiled from the best data available, as detailed in the water accounting statement notes, in the time available to compile it from a number of sources. The Bureau of Meteorology takes a nationally-consistent approach to report preparation and presentation; hence, for a few line items there may be local data of higher quality that were not used.

3. All significant and specific interpretations of the Australian Water Accounting Standard 1 for the purpose of the preparation of this report are explained in the water accounting policy Notes. The Bureau of Meteorology is responsible for these interpretations.

Ian Prosser

Assistant Director, Water Information Services

Bureau of Meteorology

30 April 2014