INDUSTRY NEWS
Basin Plan Review underway
By ABA Water Consultant Christine Freak
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THE Murray-Darling Basin Plan Review is underway, with the Murray- Darling Basin Authority( MDBA) releasing a Discussion Paper for public consultation. This is a really important process, as it will be pivotal in shaping any Basin Plan 2.0. As a quick recap, the Basin Plan was designed to address‘ over-extraction’ and reduce water usage to new Sustainable Diversion Limits( SDLs). The featured diagram( see right) from the Discussion Paper shows how water use has changed in the Basin. This means 72 % of water stays in rivers, and just 28 % is diverted( for agriculture, town water supply, and other uses). So how does the Review look so far? Well, it’ s early days, but the positive is that there is a clear focus on needing to shift beyond“ just adding water” to improve environmental outcomes in the Basin. The importance of integrated catchment management is, at last, gaining traction. The need to optimise the delivery of environmental water via constraints management is a key focus, as well as complementary measures like invasive species control, fish passageways and riparian land management, to name a few. The part many are most interested in are the initial SDL assessments – put simply – asking the question of if SDLs are correctly set. This was, after all, a key focus of the Basin Plan to set SDLs, which legislation requires are at an Ecologically Sustainable Level of Take( ESLT). There is good news on that:
• Of 80 groundwater sources, at least 77 were determined to have an SDL at an ESLT, with the remaining three requiring further investigation;
• Of 29 surface water sources, Basin Plan, this comes as a relief to there is confidence that at least 21 have an SDL at an many.
ESLT, with another five likely, Of those valleys which are said and three requiring further to require further investigations investigations.
( SA Murray, Lower-Darling and Given where we were at before the Barwon-Darling), the detail makes
In A Nutshell- Autumn 2026 Vol 27 Issue 1
Changing water use across the Murray-Darling Basin. Source: 2026 Murray – Darling Basin Plan Review Discussion Paper [ P 3 ]. clear that it is not suggested the SDL needs to change necessarily, instead identifying the drivers of the environmental risks in each catchment, which are almost all‘ pattern of flow’ or‘ non flow’