Sydney
Administration

Water management in the Sydney region is governed by the Water Management Act 2000 (New South Wales [NSW]).

There are three further legislative acts directly related to water management activities in the Sydney region:

1. Sydney Water Catchment Management Act 1998 (NSW) that governs the roles and responsibilities of the Sydney Catchment Authority
2. Sydney Water Act 1994 (NSW) that governs the roles and responsibilities of Sydney Water
3. Energy and Utilities Administration Act 1987 (NSW) that governs water savings action plan initiatives.

The NSW Office of Water is responsible for managing water access in the region and issues and administers water access licences. See the NSW Office of Water website for more information on water access licences and their categories.

The water sharing plans implemented under the Water Management Act 2000 define entitlements that were in place at the commencement of the plan, categories of water access licences, and management rules for sharing the water between environmental needs and the needs of the user over a period of ten years. It also sets rules for the trading of water licences and annual water allocations. After ten years the water sharing plans are reviewed, revised, and reinstated.

Water sharing plans that are applicable in the Sydney region include the Water Sharing Plan for the Greater Metropolitan Region Unregulated River Water Sources (New South Wales), which commenced on 1 July 2011, and the Water Sharing Plan for the Kangaroo River Water Source, which commenced on 1 July 2004.

The Water Sharing Plan for the Greater Metropolitan Region Groundwater Sources (New South Wales) defines the rules for managing the groundwater resource in the Sydney region. This plan was commenced on 1 July 2011.

The Water Management Act 2000 guides the management of all water resources in the Sydney region and makes provisions for the environmental health of the Sydney region's rivers and groundwater systems through two main systems, planned environmental water and adaptive environmental water.

Planned environmental water is prescribed under the rules of a water sharing plan. Adaptive environmental water allows water to be taken and used for the environment under conditions set out in specific water access licences.

Licences are issued by New South Wales Office of Water. The regulating authority overseeing environmental flow management in the Sydney region is the New South Wales Office of Environment and Heritage.

Environmental water provisions are specified in the water sharing plans by either protecting a proportion of water for the purpose of fundamental ecosystem health and/or specific environmental rules (planned environmental water), or by allowing licensed water to be committed for environmental purposes (adaptive environmental water). The specifics of these adaptive environmental provisions are diverse and dependent upon where a licence is located. Specific flow rules are specified in the water licences issued to water utilities or to water management authorities that release water for environmental purposes.

• require a visible flow at licensed pump sites or other locations before water users can extract water; this is a minimum level of environmental protection that is specified in all plans
• introduce a 'cease to pump' condition when river flows drop below a specified level for licensed users
• set daily limits on extraction for different flows (low, medium and high flows)–where there are a high number of extractors or there is a high level of environmental protection required
• recognise that some alluvial aquifers are highly connected to their parent streams, and in these circumstances the goal of water sharing rules is to manage the surface water and highly connected groundwater as one resource.

Water sharing rules to protect ecosystems that depend on groundwater include an overall annual limit on extractions.

The groundwater plans provide rules that:

• reserve the storage component of the aquifer
• protect a proportion of the natural recharge (i.e., the volume of rainfall or streamflow that naturally infiltrates into a groundwater system)
• refine recharge estimates and, if necessary, reduce entitlements in those systems that are over-allocated
• set distance limits between any new bores and groundwater dependent ecosystems.

More details about the status of current environmental water management arrangements covering the Sydney region can be found in The Australian Environmental Water Management Report or on the New South Wales Office of Water website.

Specific environmental flows in the region can be found in the Environmental benefit section of the 'Water access and use' note.

The Sydney region contains a number of organisations that take part in managing and distributing water in the region. The 2013 Account uses data from several local councils and water authorities to compile information for the Sydney region. The regional boundaries of these organisations can be seen in figures A1 and A2.

Table A1 presents information on the organisations that are responsible for water management activities within the Sydney region.

Figure A1  Map showing the boundaries of the Sydney Water Corporation and the Sydney Catchment Authority

Figure A2  Map showing the boundaries of the local councils that contribute to the 2013 Account