There are 93 economic assets comprising 1806 elements within the Central West subregion and they are all considered water dependent (Table 11). The economic assets represent groupings of economic elements. Economic elements are defined as groundwater and surface water ‘water access right’ and ‘basic water right (stock and domestic)’. Within the asset database elements are grouped by type and spatial location to create assets (see Section 1.3.1.2).
Water access rights are licensed, while basic water rights (stock and domestic) are share components included in basic landholder rights, and are both covered under water sharing plans (WSPs) (NSW Department of Primary Industries, 2015). Share components are water access entitlements that are a specified share or volume of water that can be extracted within a specified water management area.
These entitlements are represented spatially by:
- location of surface water offtake points and groundwater bores (point features)
- watercourse segments (line features)
- water access rights that do not require a works approval are included in the water-dependent asset register by assigning the water access right to the water source area (polygon features).
In the Central West subregion there are 57 assets (1474 elements) within the ‘Surface water management zone or area’ subgroup comprising 24 water access right and 33 basic water right (stock and domestic) entitlements (Table 11). The locations of the economic surface water assets are shown in Figure 8.
There are 36 assets (332 elements) within the ‘Groundwater management zone or area’ subgroup comprising 19 water access right and 17 basic water right (stock and domestic) entitlements (Table 11). The locations of the economic groundwater assets are shown in Figure 9. It shows the groundwater access rights as being concentrated in the south-west of the subregion, with a cluster around Dubbo.
The asset list and other details are available from the water-dependent asset register and asset list (O'Grady and Bruce, 2016) and the asset database (Bioregional Assessment Programme, Dataset 1).
Table 11 Summary of the economic assets within the Central West subregion
Data: Bioregional Assessment Programme (Dataset 1)
Basic water rights include points (depicted as yellow points), features along the streams (depicted as purple lines) and rights located within the general catchment area (blue coloured areas).
Data: Bioregional Assessment Programme (Dataset 1, Dataset 3); NSW Office of Water (Dataset 4)
Data: Bioregional Assessment Programme (Dataset 1, Dataset 2); NSW Office of Water (Dataset 4)
