Identifying opportunities for achieving water savings throughout the Murray-Darling Basin

Demand for water from the rivers of the Murray-Darling Basin (MDB) continues to increase, despite a Cap on diversions being in place since 1996. Previous and ongoing efforts to improve water use efficiency within the Basin have focused primarly on engineering solutions, in particular through reducing losses from seepage, leakage and evaporation within the distribution system, including by upgrading channels or replacing them with pipes. Water trading is enabling water to be moved from low value to high value enterprises consistent with market demand. On many properties the instillation of improved water reticulation and application systems, including replacing some of the flood and furrow systems with sprinkler, trickler and micro-drip systems, is also achieving significant savings. A model was constructed to explore the potential for achieving further on-farm savings within the MDB through increased adoption of best management practices aided by low and high levels of investment. Despite significant limitations in the underlying data, it was shown that savings in excess of 900 GL per annum can be achieved on irrigated farms in the Basin, under reasonable time frames, and plausible scenarios for farm investment and the adoption of new technologies. Savings of this magnitude have the potential to provide a significant incentive to develop and implement policies that could bring them into being.