Page 894 - Week 04 - Thursday, 3 May 2007
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The lowest priority is accorded to urban residential use. What this final priority means is that those people who are currently licensed to use water for urban residential irrigation will be able to continue to do so, but only to the extent of efficient use. However, no new or expanded use water for urban residential use will be licensed. In particular, this will mean that no further groundwater use on urban residential properties will be permitted.
Groundwater in the ACT is a small but valuable resource. This government considers that its use should be directed to where it can make the greatest contribution to meeting Think water, act water targets for reducing mains water use. Urban residential properties have practicable alternatives to reduce their demand on mains water through such measures as water efficiency, rainwater use and gray water reuse. But such measures would often be insufficient for public and commercial uses where a greater quantity of water is required. Reserving groundwater use in the urban area to public and commercial purposes will, in the longer term, lead to a greater reduction in the demand on mains water and the more widespread adoption of water sensitive urban design measures in the existing urban area, as well as greater public benefits.
In addition to the new approach to water allocation, the bill makes changes to ensure our water resources legislation is consistent with our commitments under the Intergovernmental Agreement on a National Water Initiative.
Two significant changes have been needed. The first is to explicitly allocate water as a share of the sustainable yield of the catchment, rather than specifying a particular volume. This is a very important change as it facilitates sustainable and transparent management of our water resources in the face of climate change. I will give an example. We currently allocate the sustainable yield of a catchment—let us say it is 100 megalitres all up—in absolute terms. Person A gets 20 megalitres, person B 15 megalitres and so on. Should the climate change, the sustainable yield of the catchment may be reduced and we would find that we had over-allocated in this catchment. Conversely, if each person gets a percentage share of the yield, not a volume, the catchment is not over-allocated if the climate changes and the yield reduces.
Secondly, we need more specific controls on how trading is managed. With appropriate controls, trading is a useful tool to enable water use to move to higher benefit uses. In the future it is anticipated that an active market will provide the mechanism whereby new users can acquire a water access entitlement and other users dispose of a water entitlement they no longer need or use. In order to encourage the development of a market all new users will be required to purchase trading rights and existing users will also be required to purchase trading rights if they wish to amend or transfer their water access entitlement. However, how water can be traded will be clearly specified to avoid unintended consequences.
There are also necessary changes to the current act arising from two recent challenges to decisions made under the act which proceeded to the Court of Appeal. The court identified shortcomings in the act in the way that decisions on allocations and licences were linked to the sustainable yield of the subcatchment. These have been remedied.
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