Burdekin: Water rights
- Water licences are granted under the Water Act 2000 to take water and/or interfere with water.
- Water licences and allocations for consumptive use are administered by the Department of Natural Resources, Mines and Energy.
For further information on the region's water management scroll down this page or click on the links below:
Operating rules and constraints
- Abstraction of water is controlled by the Department of Natural Resources, Mines and Energy through allocation planning and water licensing arrangements. Water can only be abstracted and/or interfered with from designated areas within the region when a water authorisation (water allocation, license or permit) is issued.
- Resource operations licences or distribution operations licences are required for the operation of water supply scheme infrastructure and distribution of water to water allocation holders. Holders must comply with these licences for day-to-day operational, water sharing and seasonal water assignment rules.
- The Burdekin has two resource operations licences operated by SunWater: the Burdekin Haughton Water Supply Scheme resource operations licence and the Bowen Broken Water Supply Scheme resource operations licence.
- The Burdekin Groundwater Management Area water-sharing rules are the rules prescribed under the Water Regulation 2016 for a water licence not managed under the protocol. The water-sharing rules describe the arrangements under which access to groundwater within the area is managed.
- The Lower Burdekin Water Board holds a distribution operations licence to distribute supplemented water in the plan area. The Lower Burdekin distribution operations licence is guided by the Lower Burdekin distribution operations licence manual.
Water entitlements and other statutory water rights
- Surface water managed under a water plan has two distinct categories: regulated (or 'supplemented') access to water within a water supply scheme managed via dams and distribution systems; and unregulated (or 'unsupplemented') access to water in a natural river or aquifer system.
- Supplemented and unsupplemented water entitlements are prioritised, managed, and administered separately.
Water allocations
- Annual water allocations, known as supplemented allocations, are provided for all water users within water supply schemes. Allocation percentages are announced by resource operations licence/distribution operations licence holders on the first day of the water year (generally 1 July–30 June unless otherwise specified) for supplemented entitlement holders. Additional announcements can be made during the year, but the allocation percentage cannot exceed 100% of the allocation volume, or be reduced below the initial allocation percentage.
- Announced allocation percentages vary between water supply schemes and priority groups. Urban licence holders of supplemented entitlements generally have 'high priority' allocations, typically set at 100% of their allocated volume. Urban holders of supplemented entitlements have the same announced limit applied to their entitlement as other supplemented entitlement holders of the same priority entitlements.
- Unsupplemented water (taken from the natural flow of a river or from groundwater) is managed separately; for example, unsupplemented water may be abstracted during announced periods based on flow thresholds that ensure environmental streamflows are maintained.
Trades and water rights transfers
- There are three active water markets in Queensland: the water allocation market, which concerns the trading of regulated water access entitlements; the seasonal water assignment market, which deals with the seasonal (temporary) assignment of water allocations and other entitlements; and the relocatable water licence market, which concerns the relocation of water licences from one parcel of land to another.
- Water allocations in Queensland are separate from land rights, and are partly or wholly tradeable and registered on the Department of Natural Resources and Mines water allocation register. Relocatable licences can be partly or wholly traded after assessment and are specific to a water resource plan or zone within a water resource plan area.
- In the Burdekin region, trading of access entitlements or allocations do not occur between water supply schemes but can occur between zones within them. The rules for water allocation trading are detailed in the Water Regulation 2016, Water plan (Burdekin Basin) 2007, Burdekin Basin water management protocol, and the water–sharing policy for the Burdekin Groundwater Management Area.
- Information on water rights trading in the Burdekin Basin region during the 2018–19 year can be found in the Water access and use note in 'Supporting information'.