A water monitoring tool launched by the Bureau of Meteorology (BoM) is to be used to determine how much water is in the Murray-Darling Basin.
Minister for Water Resources, David Littleproud said knowledge was power and the new tool would put it right in the hands of Basin communities.
“The tool will help communities understand exactly how much water is available for irrigators, communities and the environment,” Mr Littleproud said.
“The new system will standardise, combine and generate the data we have across several sources, and then present it in a way that’s easy to understand and use.”
He said the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission was currently holding an inquiry into Basin water markets — “but we can also improve accountability right now”.
“More transparency on water information is the key to effectively delivering the Basin Plan,” Mr Littleproud said.
“It will help to hold decision-makers to account by making clear what water resources we have in each region.”
He said the system would be rolled out over the next three years in two phases with the first phase consisting of fortnightly updates of data for water in storage on a valley scale, and the second updating water availability data at the river reach and individual storage scale and allowing the user to aggregate data to valley and Basin scale.
The BoM has been responsible for water information functions since 2007.
