Water management in Australia: sharing experience
Posted on 10.06.2019
Part 1. Shortly after the journey of the GEF project team
About the Basin in brief
Goulbern (560 km long) and Broken (199km long) basin is a subbasin of the Murray (2500 km long) Darling (1545 km long) catchment, which is the biggest and vitally important river system in Australia.
Water Resources of the GB basin are used for irrigation of numerous orchards and wine yards; pastures of “happy and healthy” cows, sheep and horses; production of electricity; drinking and domestic supply. GB is home for kangaroos, platypuses, birds and fish. People enjoy water sports, recreational fishing and picknicks, this is an area of the Yorta Yorta Nations to the north and Taungurung to the south. Over 200,000 people live in the catchment, 6000 of them are indigenous.
Both Goulburn and Broken rivers starts in the great dividing range , north east from vibrant Melbourne. During the tour we went to popular ski resort at Mt Buller where the Goulburn river starts. Ski resort managers together with environment authorities and GBCMA understand the great value of the state of the catchment at its source and particularly how crucial vegetation on slopes are for keeping snow: if snow melts slowly it means that it feeds in the river downstream slower and for a longer period. Thus the vegetation on the slopes is managed in a very scientific and caring manner. A significant part of funds which skiers pay at the resort are directed for the environmental management there.
Photo: Mount Buller, Australia, © Louis Perrin, manager of environmental services at the ski resort of Mount Buller and Stirling.
From left to right: Nick Reeves, manager at Buller Ski Resort, Mark Turner, Head of the Goulburn-Brocken Basin Management Department; Irina Ovcharenko, Head of the State Agency for Water Resources of Ukraine; Radu Cazacu, Deputy Head of the Water Agency of the Republic of Moldova; Tamara Kutonova, regional coordinator of the GEF Dniester project.
The two rivers flow through hilly and plain areas and discharge into the Murray river. Although GB occupies just 2% of the Murray Darling Basin, the Goulburn Broken Catchment region provides 11% of the Basin’s stream flow. An annual average water flow in the Murray is less than a daily flow in Brazil’s Amazon river.
How Australians manage environmental water
«Water for the environment is an integral part
of protecting and improving our water resources»
Hon Lisa Neville
Australian Minister of Water Resources
The Victorian Goverment coordinates development of water allocation schemes. There are two types of entitlements for water:
- permanent – expensive, guaranteed under any conditions, often horticulture,
- temporary – cheap, guaranteed only if there is lots of water, often for livestock.
Entitlements could be carried over to another year. They could also be donated (e.g. for nature).
Entitlements are allocated by the Victorian State Government. The Minister signs the entitlements for each basin and state on an annual basis.
One of such entitlements is about the environmental water. Environmental water (water for the environment, the environmental flows) is the water discharged for fishes, birds, vegetation etc. It was Australia who was very much on the forefront of a defition of the environmental flow through a so called Brisbane Declaration Global Action Agenda on Environmental Flows (2007, updated in 2017).
The environmental flows are vital to maintain physical, chemical and biological health of rivers. A 10-year monitoring of the environmental flows demonstrates improvement of the state of populations of native species of fish, platypuses, some birds e.g. an Australian crane known as Brolga here returned to the GB wetlands, submerged and bank vegetation. Environmental flow was particularly beneficial for species after the Millennium Drought.
GB discharges environmental flows water both to the main course of the river (through weirs and dams) as well to 7 wetlands (via the irrigation system) with more in the planning.
There are several types of watering actions:
- freshes (small or short-duration peak flow events which exceed the baseflow and last for one to several days),
- low flow in summer / autumn,
- low flow in winter / spring,
- year-round low-flow.
So called Seasonal Watering Plans are developed for all catchments with environmental entitlements in the State of Victoria, e.g. the one for 2017-18.
A table below describes potential watering actions (locations, volumes and periods) and objectives for the Broken River and upper Broken Creek system in 2018-19.
Readme! Since Australia is located in the Southern Hemisphere, the Australian summer corresponds to the winter in the Northern Hemisphere, and May, for example, is the last month of autumn.
| Potential environmental watering | Environmental objectives |
| Summer/autumn fresh in upper Broken Creek (1 fresh of up to 50 ML/day for 10 days in December–May) | – Maintain water quality, particularly in refuge pools |
| Summer/autumn low flows in upper Broken Creek (up to 5 ML/day for 30–60 days in December–May) | – Maintain habitat for native fish populations and waterbugs – Maintain platypus habitat – Maintain in-stream vegetation |
| Winter/spring low flows in upper Broken Creek (up to 10 ML/day for 30–60 days in June–November) | – Maintain habitat for native fish populations and waterbugs – Support successful platypus breeding – Maintain in-stream vegetation |
| Year-round low flows in the Broken River (up to 15 ML/day for 40–100 days) | – Maintain hydraulic habitat for native fish, aquatic plants and waterbugs |
| Summer/autumn freshes in the Broken River (1 fresh of 400–500 ML/day for 2–5 days in December–May) | – Scour sediment around large wood and turn over bed sediments – Provide flow cues to stimulate native fish breeding and migration – Replenish biofilms and increase productivity – Maintain habitat for aquatic plants – Maintain longitudinal connectivity for native fish passage |
Environmental watering objectives and water availability may differ depending on seasonal conditions. As much as possible, the State Water authorities seek to meet environmental water demands (and avoid water supply shortfalls) by implementing seasonally adaptive planning. Below is an example of potential environmental watering scheme for the Broken River and upper Broken Creek system under a range of planning scenarios in 2018-19.
Readme! The Australians count water in ML which means that 1 ML is 1000 cubic metres. They also consider water for the environment per year or per day.
| Planning scenario | Drought | Dry | Average | Wet |
| Expected river conditions | – No unregulated winter and spring flows in Broken River – No unregulated flows in upper Broken Creek – Minimal volume transferred to the Goulburn River – Low and ceaseto-flow events during summer/autumn below Waggarandall Weir on upper Broken Creek | – Low unregulated flows and some freshes in Broken River – No unregulated flows in the Upper Broken Creek – Up to 1,500 ML of consumptive water delivered via the Broken River in summer/autumn | – High winter and spring flows in the Broken River – Some contribution of unregulated winter and spring flows and freshes in upper Broken Creek – Up to 1,500 ML of consumptive water delivered via the Broken River in summer/autumn | |
| Expected availability of water for the environment1 | 0–267 ML | 534 ML | ||
| Potential environmental watering | – Summer /autumn fresh in upper Broken Creek – Summer /autumn low flows in upper Broken Creek – Winter/spring low flows in upper Broken Creek – Year-round low flows in the Broken River | – Summer /autumn fresh in upper Broken Creek – Summer /autumn low flows in upper Broken Creek – Winter/spring low flows in upper Broken Creek – Year-round low flows in the Broken River – Summer /autumn fresh in Broken River | – Summer /autumn fresh in upper Broken Creek – Summer /autumn low flows in upper Broken Creek – Winter/spring low flows in upper Broken Creek – Summer /autumn fresh in Broken River | – Summer /autumn fresh in upper Broken Creek |
| Possible volume of water for the environment required to achieve objectives | 1,500–2,000 ML | 1,090–5,500 ML | 890–5,300 ML | 0–1,000 ML |
A converter of ML/ day into cubic metres/second is here.
In case of very dry years some environmental water entitlements are carried over to another river, i.e. it is crucial to provide water in years after droughts.
Annual analysis of the environmental flows is presented in so called Reflections, see ones for:
- 2017-18 http://www.vewh.vic.gov.au/news-and-publications/news/water-for-the-environment-is-for-everyone,
- 2016-17 http://www.vewh.vic.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0010/445564/Reflections-Water-for-the-Environment-2016-2017.pdf ,
- 2015-16 http://www.vewh.vic.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0007/363292/VEWH-Reflections2016-FULL-web.pdf.
For more details, please check out the website of Australia’s Government.
Author – Tamara Kutonova, regional coordianator of the GEF-funded Dniester project and Mark Turner, Head of Rivers Health Programme in the GBCMA.