All economic assets are types of water access entitlements, either water access rights or basic water rights. In NSW, water access entitlements are known as ‘water access licences’. Within the asset database, every water access entitlement is an element. Elements are grouped by type and also spatially to create assets. Basic landholder rights (i.e. a type of basic water right), including riparian rights, maintain the right of those adjacent to rivers, estuaries, lakes or aquifers underlying the land to extract water for domestic and stock use without a water access licence. Basic landholder rights are defined by the jurisdiction based on the location of the water source and may include an estimated volume of use based on the number of landholders with adjacent water sources.
For the economic assets, the water access entitlements are divided into two classes:
- basic water right (domestic and stock) – this is the right to take water for domestic and stock purposes only. A basic right for ‘take of groundwater’ requires approval for the works (bore) but does not require a licence for the extraction of groundwater. A basic right for ‘take of surface water’ does not require an approval for the works or approval for the extraction of surface water.
- water access right – this right requires an approval for the works and a licence for the extraction of the water. The extraction of the water can be for a range of purposes including irrigation, commercial, industrial, farming, dewatering, mining, intensive agriculture, etc.
Data sources used to create economic assets for the Hunter subregion are listed in Table 4. Both surface water and groundwater licensing data were sourced from the NSW Office of Water to determine economic assets (NSW Office of Water,Dataset 25, Dataset 26) and include all licensed entitlements under the NSW Water Act 1912 and the NSW Water Management Act 2000. Water access licence data include whether the water source is groundwater or surface water, the entitlement volume and the corresponding works locations. These data are currently not publicly available and were obtained by special request. Consistent with how water licensing information is published under the Commonwealth’s Water Act 2007, NSW Department of Primary Industries Water have consented to publication of these data in an aggregated form that protects the privacy of individual licence holders. Data about basic landholder rights, essentially non-licensed stock and domestic use permitted, were sourced from water sharing plans (NSW Department of Primary Industries, 2014).
In collating the economic elements, it was considered important to ensure no current or active water access entitlements were excluded, even where there was doubt about the current status of the entitlement, for example, ‘sleeper’ licences. For example, basic water rights (stock and domestic) do not have to be renewed on a frequent basis leading to some uncertainty about their current use status. This meant that only surface water and groundwater licences that were definitely ‘abandoned’ or ‘cancelled’ at the time of data extraction were marked as not ‘current’ or ‘active’ and therefore excluded for BA purposes.
Each licence can have one or multiple works associated with it, where the works is the location where the water is extracted through a bore or pump. Where works (locations) information was present it was linked to the particular surface water or groundwater licences, and a count added to show how many works were associated with each licence. It was assumed that each of the works associated with a water access right licence extracts an equal share of the volume. Thus, if a groundwater licence of 80 ML/year was associated with four works (bores), 20 ML/year was assigned to each work. It is not possible to validate this assumption within the resources of the BA. It is possible that the majority of extraction occurs at a single works location and is not evenly distributed across all works associated with the licence.
A digital spatial layer was generated using the spatial coordinates provided with the licensed datasets, or in the case of the groundwater licences linked to bores in the National Groundwater Information System (NGIS; Bureau of Meteorology, Dataset 27) database. This spatial layer was overlain with the PAE for the Hunter subregion. Thirty-five groundwater entitlement licences associated with Hunter subregion mines could not be linked to bores in the NGIS database. Instead OZMIN (Geoscience Australia, Dataset 28) was consulted to obtain mine location coordinates as a proxy for the actual bore locations. Water access licence records have been manually validated down to 200 ML to ensure all volumes above this amount were assigned a spatial location.
The class of asset was aggregated using the NSW Office of Water 'purpose' field which records the purpose that water is used for. Any purpose that was listed as ‘Domestic’ and/or ‘Stock’ was classed as a basic water right. Where the purpose is commercial, irrigation, farming, industrial or dewatering, the asset is classed as a water access right. Where a purpose included ‘Stock’ or ‘Domestic’ and another licensed purpose, it was classed as a water access right.
Groundwater works that were not classified as a basic water right or a water access right were classed as ‘null’. These included test bores, bores installed for groundwater remediation, exploratory bores, exploratory research and monitoring bores. These elements are ‘flagged’ in the asset database and are not included in the water‑dependent asset register. Once data checking and spatial attribution were completed, these pre-processed datasets were incorporated into the asset database (Bioregional Assessment Programme, Dataset 29, Dataset 30).
Spatial layers of NSW water sharing plan and groundwater macro plan areas were intersected with the Hunter PAE to identify the economic assets (Table 4). While 17 groundwater source areas and 52 surface water source areas intersected the Hunter PAE, some were excluded from the water-dependent asset register. This is because intersection with the PAE was a result of minor differences in their mapped boundaries which caused slivers of intersection rather than true intersection. In other words, some of the water sharing plans and macro groundwater plans selected in this way are not actually in the PAE (see Section 1.3.3).
Table 4 Data sources for economic assets in the Hunter subregion asset list
NSW Office of Water (Dataset 25) Restricted access |
In Bioregional Assessment Programme (Dataset 29)b |
In Bioregional Assessment Programme (Dataset 29)b |
|
Groundwater Entitlements Hunter |
NSW Office of Water (Dataset 26) Restricted access |
In Bioregional Assessment Programme (Dataset 30)c |
In Bioregional Assessment Programme (Dataset 30)c |
NSW Office of Water – National Groundwater Information System |
Bureau of Meteorology (Dataset 27) |
In Bioregional Assessment Programme (Dataset 30)c |
In Bioregional Assessment Programme (Dataset 30)c |
Operating Mines OZMIN |
Geoscience Australia (Dataset 28) |
In Bioregional Assessment Programme (Dataset 30)c |
In Bioregional Assessment Programme (Dataset 30)c |
Water Asset Information Tool database – water supply infrastructure |
Australian Government Department of the Environment (Dataset 4) |
2 |
2 |
Hunter surface water licences (water access rights and basic water rights) |
Bioregional Assessment Programme (Dataset 29)b |
4,818 |
62 |
Hunter groundwater bores (water access rights and basic water rights) |
Bioregional Assessment Programme (Dataset 30)c |
5,453 |
131 |
Regulated Rivers |
NSW Office of Water (Dataset 31) |
1 |
1 |
Groundwater Macro Plans (groundwater source areas) |
NSW Office of Water (Dataset 32) |
17 |
17 |
Water Sharing Plans (surface water source areas) |
NSW Office of Water (Dataset 33) |
53 |
53 |
Total |
10,344 |
266 |
aThe asset database (Bioregional Assessment Programme, Dataset 1) is a collation of all these source datasets. Some assets may be captured in multiple databases.
bBioregional Assessment Programme (Dataset 30) is the derived dataset of NSW Office of Water (Dataset 26), Bureau of Meteorology (Dataset 27) and Geoscience Australia (Dataset 28).
cBioregional Assessment Programme (Dataset 29) is the derived dataset of NSW Office of Water (Dataset 25).