Hunter River salinity trading scheme
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Working together to protect river quality and sustain economic development
The NSW Government's Hunter River Salinity Trading Scheme leads the world in using economic instruments for the effective protection of waterways. The scheme has been responsible for restoring the waters of the Hunter to an unprecedented level of freshness. Water salinity is more stable and lower—the river is now as fresh as many bottled mineral waters.
The scheme is a huge win for the entire Hunter River community. Agriculture benefits from fresh irrigation waters while miners and electricity generators can make controlled discharges of excess waters.
It protects the region's most precious natural resource, provides for diverse interests to work together, and allows continued economic development, providing a secure future for the region.
This is achieved by:
- extensive and continuous real time monitoring of environmental conditions and discharges (see What makes the scheme successful?);
- scheduling saline discharges to complement high river flow rates and low background salinity levels so that salinity targets are not exceeded due to industrial discharges (see How the scheme works); and
- sharing the total allowable discharge according to dischargers' holdings of tradeable salinity credits (see Allocating credits); and
- issuing initial credits with different life spans (200 credits expire every 2 years) and then fairly distributing 200 new credits to those parties who value the credits the most via a public auction every 2 years, starting in 2004 (see auction proposal).