Amended plan to manage Condamine and Balonne water resources
12 December 2011
Water users in the Condamine and Balonne will now be able to trade water allocations more easily following the release of a revised resource operations plan for the region.
Department of Environment and Resource Management Deputy Director-General Debbie Best today announced the release of the Condamine and Balonne Resource Operations Plan Amendment.
Ms Best said the plan amendment was developed through a combination of community and stakeholder consultation and comprehensive surface water modelling.
“The changes to the existing Condamine and Balonne Resource Operations Plan, which was released in December 2008, address a number of issues identified by the community,” Ms Best said.
“The plan amendment allows greater flexibility for the temporary trading of water allocations in the Upper Condamine Water Supply Scheme.
“The boundary in the Oakey-Gowrie sub-catchment area has been extended to more accurately reflect overland flow drainage paths and eight unsupplemented water licences which were omitted from the initial plan have been converted to water allocations.
“The amendment also allows for the conversion of an additional eight existing water licences to tradeable water allocations,” she said.
Ms Best said the plan amendment would enable the use of the Chinchilla Weir Water Supply Scheme to distribute treated coal seam gas (CSG) water.
”The reuse of treated CSG water that has been released into the Chinchilla Weir from the Kenya-Chinchilla CSG Project would provide irrigators in the Chinchilla area with an alternate source of water,” Ms Best said.
“It is important to acknowledge that the rules detailed in the plan amendment deal only with the treated CSG water after it has been approved for use in accordance with the Environmental Protection Act 1994.
“The plan amendment also imposes strict requirements for water accounting, monitoring and reporting to ensure the release and take of treated CSG water does not impact upon water users’ existing access to water.”
Ms Best said a draft version of the plan amendment had been released in February this year for public feedback.
“All the submissions received from groups and individuals during the consultation period were considered in the drafting of the final plan amendment,” she said.
“A consultation report has been also prepared to explain how the department dealt with each of the issues raised in the public submissions.”
The amended Condamine and Balonne Resource Operations Plan 2008 and the consultation report are available on the DERM website at www.derm.qld.gov.au/wrp/condamine.html
Last updated 12 December 2011