Environmental water management planning
Environmental water management
The Office of Environment and Heritage (OEH) manages both discretionary planned environmental water (established through the provisions of a water sharing plan) and adaptive environmental water (held as Water Access Licences by the Minister for the Environment and others). OEH may also deliver environmental water owned or acquired by other parties, including non-government organisations.
Opportunities for environmental watering at target sites across the state depend on the availability of environmental water and the likely ecological response to water at any given time. OEH uses a variety of tools to support its decision-making in the management of environmental water, including expert advice from research organisations, Environmental Water Advisory Groups and other government agencies, including catchment management authorities (CMAs), the NSW Office of Water (NOW) and the State Water Corporation.
Environmental water plans
There are a range of statutory water management plans that may be prepared under the Water Management Act 2000, which include water sharing plans that are prepared by NOW and adaptive environmental water use plans that are prepared by OEH and approved by NOW.
Water sharing plans establish rules for sharing water between the environment and water users, as well as between different types of water users. These plans have been developed for all of the major inland regulated rivers as well as many unregulated rivers.
Where additional water is being recovered for environmental use, it is held as water access licences. OEH has prepared adaptive environmental water use plans for the management of this licensed environmental water, which satisfy the requirements of the Water Management Act. Adaptive environmental water use plans have already been prepared and approved for:
which are all RiverBank target valleys for environmental watering. These plans link to the objectives of the relevant water sharing plans.
In addition to these statutory plans, OEH’s water management planning framework includes environmental water management plans and annual watering plans.
Environmental water management plans are strategic wetland complex or valley-scale documents that will provide a link between environmental water management and catchment action plans developed by CMAs across NSW. They identify environmental assets and values, assess water use priorities, and outline the water and land management issues that need to be addressed to support environmental values. Environmental water management plans developed to date include the:
OEH prepares annual watering plans for RiverBank target valleys each water year (July to June), based on advice received from Environmental Water Advisory Groups. These plans identify watering priorities under different climatic conditions and various water availability scenarios and, accordingly, provide a range of advice to OEH on the use of all available environmental water for the coming year.
Page last updated: 14 December 2011
