The Environmental Water Reserve
“The management of water will be based on an understanding that a healthy economy and society is based on a healthy environment.”
This is the first fundamental principle for water management in Victoria, as stated in the 2004 Our Water Our Future White Paper. Following from the White Paper, the Victorian Parliament legislated – for the first time in history – to give rivers a legal entitlement to a share of their own flow. Known as the Environmental Water Reserve (EWR) this is water that is set aside either as an environmental entitlement, through conditions on a bulk entitlement, license or permit, under a management plan, or through other provisions under the Victorian Water Act.
In recent years the Victorian government has commissioned environmental flow studies for each of northern Victoria’s rivers. These studies typically use the FLOWS methodology to describe key flow components as part of a recommendation for an environmental flow regime that sustains ecological processes and maintains connectivity between the river and its floodplain. (9) The studies show that all the rivers in the region are stressed at some or all periods of the year and require additions to the EWR. Even the heritage listed Ovens River, with its near natural flow regime, is stressed by extractions in summer. The question then becomes one of how much water is required to be added to the EWR to meet the environmental flow regime and how that water is to be recovered.
References
(9) See http://www.ourwater.vic.gov.au/environment/rivers/flows/assessment
