1.3.1.2 Compiling assets and developing the water-dependent asset register

1.3.1.2.1 Ecological assets

Four natural resource management organisations (NRMs) contributed data to the WAIT database (Table 3). These NRM-nominated assets were added to the asset database. When the Sydney Basin bioregion was defined in 2012, it comprised all of the Sydney Metropolitan Catchment Management Authority (CMA) area, a significant proportion of the Hawkesbury-Nepean CMA, part of the Southern Rivers CMA and a small area within the Central West CMA. From 1 January 2014, NSW CMAs transitioned into local land services (LLS) regions, however, the data continues to be attributed to the CMAs. Table 3 also includes some Atlas of living Australia data, which were added to the WAIT database following the request of participants at asset workshops in the Gloucester, Hunter and Sydney Basin asset workshops to include the platypus. All of the assets from the WAIT database are ecological assets.

Table 3 Natural resources management organisations that contributed data to the Water Asset Information Tool database

^aadded by the Bioregional Assessment Programme in response to community requests to include platypus as an asset

All data sources used to define ecological assets in the Sydney Basin bioregion are listed in Table 4. Included are assets that were identified by local and state government workshop participants during the Sydney Basin assets workshop in August 2015 (see Section 1.3.1.4). Not all assets suggested at the workshops made it into the asset list for the Sydney Basin bioregion because they either failed the ‘fit-for-BA’ test or were not in the PAE. The fit-for-BA test is intended to ensure that data included in the water-dependent asset register meet BA quality standards. The tests enable the exclusion of duplicate data, irrelevant data, superseded data and data with inadequate information content (e.g. lacking spatial coverage). Despite these tests, some duplication of elements obtained from the various local, state and Australian Government agencies and NRM bodies does occur. This means that the total number of reported assets includes multiple occurrences of some assets, which can reflect the assets’ different values and/or different mapping programmes. For example, Lake Illawarra appears in the ‘Directory of Important Wetlands’ (Australian Government Department of the Environment, Dataset 2); the ‘National Groundwater Dependent Ecosystems (GDE) Atlas’ (Bureau of Meteorology, Dataset 3); NSW Wetlands (NSW Office of Environment and Heritage, Dataset 4); NSW water source areas (Bioregional Assessment Programme, Dataset 5); and in relation to various GDE vegetation and habitat (potential species distribution) datasets.

Table 4 Data sources for ecological assets in the asset list for the Sydney Basin bioregion

^aThe asset database (Bioregional Assessment Programme, Dataset 1) is a collation of all these source datasets. Some assets may be captured in multiple databases. Typology and punctuation are given as provided in the metadata for these datasets.

^bNSW Office of Environment and Heritage (OEH) is custodian of these datasets generated by the former NSW Department of Environment Climate Change and Water (DECCW).

OEH = New South Wales Office of Environment and Heritage; DPI = New South Wales Department of Primary Industries; DP&I = New South Wales Department of Planning & Infrastructure

1.3.1.2.2 Economic assets

Economic assets can be broadly classified as water sources, water access entitlements (either water access rights or basic water rights) or water infrastructure. 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 entitlement 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:

Data sources used to create economic assets for the Sydney Basin bioregion are listed in Table 5. Water access licence and entitlement data for surface water and groundwater sources in the Sydney Basin PAE were collated by the Bureau of Meteorology based on groundwater bore and surface water offtake locations and water access entitlements data from the NSW Department of Primary Industries Water (DPI Water; formerly NSW Office of Water). The data supplied included current or active water access entitlements on issue under the NSW Water Act 1912 and the NSW Water Management Act 2000 as of July 2015. The NSW water access entitlement data are currently not publicly available and were obtained by special request from DPI Water. Consistent with how water licensing information is published under the Commonwealth’s Water Act 2007, DPI 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, were sourced from water sharing plans (NSW Department of Primary Industries, 2014).

The DPI Water spatial layers were clipped to the PAE for the Sydney Basin bioregion to identify just those works within the PAE. A work refers to a bore or pump and provides the location where water under a licence can be extracted. Where a water access licence is associated with multiple works, it was assumed that each of the works accounts for an equal share of the licensed volume. Thus, for a groundwater licence of 80 ML/year, associated with four works (bores), 20 ML/year was assigned to each work; however, 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.

The class of asset was assigned 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 derived datasets were incorporated into the asset database (Bioregional Assessment Programme, Dataset 5, Dataset 34).

To determine which water sources should be included in the asset list, the spatial layers of NSW water sharing plan water source areas (NSW Office of Water, Dataset 35) and groundwater source areas (Bureau of Meteorology, Dataset 36)) were intersected with the Sydney Basin PAE (Table 5). Eleven groundwater source areas and seven surface water source areas intersect the Sydney Basin PAE.

Table 5 Data sources for economic assets in the Sydney Basin bioregion asset list

^aThe asset database (Bioregional Assessment Programme, Dataset 1) is a collation of all these source datasets. Some assets may be captured in multiple databases.

^bNSW Office of Environment and Heritage (OEH) is custodian of these datasets generated by the former NSW Department of Environment Climate Change and Water (DECCW).

Unlike the water entitlements held by individual licence holders, which are associated with licensed works (point features) and hence a specific location where water extraction occurs, the water entitlements held by WaterNSW (formerly the Sydney Catchment Authority), who manage the supply of water to the Greater Sydney region, pertain to water source areas (or water supply catchments). Thus WaterNSW water entitlements, which represent the bulk of water entitlements in the Sydney Basin bioregion, have been attributed to the surface water source areas (polygon features) specified in the Greater Metropolitan Region Unregulated Rivers Water Sources Water Sharing Plan (NSW Office of Water, Dataset 35), which intersect the PAE.

The asset list also includes nine water storages, which form part of the Greater Sydney region’s water supply network (Australian Government Department of Environment, Dataset 37), plus one storage near Lithgow, which was given a spatial location from the NSW Wetlands dataset (DECCW, Dataset 4). The subregion includes other storages, but not physically within the PAE.

1.3.1.2.3 Sociocultural assets

Sociocultural assets were primarily sourced from heritage and national estate lists within the Australian Heritage Database (Department of the Environment, 2013).

Indigenous sociocultural assets were primarily sourced from existing Commonwealth heritage databases (Table 6). Two additional assets (CSIRO, Dataset 38) were derived from a report by Moggridge (2010), which identified a couple of culturally significant groundwater-dependent ecosystems (GDEs) within the bioregion. There were no BA Programme specific meetings held with Indigenous knowledge holders in the Sydney Basin bioregion to identify additional culturally significant assets.

Table 6 Datasets used to identify sociocultural assets in the Sydney Basin bioregion

^aThe asset database (Bioregional Assessment Programme, Dataset 1) is a collation of all these source datasets. Some assets may be captured in multiple databases.

Typically, sociocultural assets that are landscape water features are included within the ecological asset classes to avoid repetition of assets, but as noted earlier, the asset list does contain some duplication of assets.