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Water Reform Action Plan

Gwydir Wetlands. Image courtesy of Jane Humphries, DPIE.

In 2017 several reviews into water resource management in NSW were undertaken, including the Murray Darling Basin Water Compliance Review and Ken Matthews’ Independent Investigation into NSW Water Management and Compliance (Matthews Report). These reviews made recommendations for improving water management and compliance in NSW and highlighted the need to better manage water for the environment in the northern Murray-Darling Basin.

In response to these recommendations the NSW Government developed the Water Reform Action Plan (WRAP) and created the Water Renewal Taskforce to assist with the delivery of key outcomes. The WRAP ensures that NSW takes a fair and transparent approach to managing water for current and future generations and has forty (40) discrete actions that are grouped four broad themes:

  • Introduce best practice for water management
  • Ensure transparency in how we share, allocate and manage water
  • Build a compliance and enforcement regime that ensures strong and certain regulation
  • Build capacity to support implementation of water reforms.

Work completed according to the WRAP has contributed to development of an equitable and transparent approach to the management of water, the establishment of a new independent regulator with strong regulatory powers, the rollout of a robust metering framework and a work program to better manage environmental water.

  1. waterdrop

    Better management of water for the environment

    We are working to better manage water for the environment in the northern Murray-Darling Basin. Our enduring solutions are actively managing water for the environment, managing resumption of flows after extended dry periods, and limiting daily water take.
  2. waterdrop

    Information for licence holders – active management

    Find out what's new in the Barwon-Darling, Gwydir and Macquarie-Bogan, and what you need to do to comply with the new rules.
  3. waterdrop

    Metering and building a robust compliance framework

    We established the Natural Resources Access Regulator, committed to the Compliance Compact and are rolling out the NSW Non-Urban Water Metering Framework.
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