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General Studies show that nationally only around 0.1% of groundwater storage (or around 5 million megalitres) is renewable each year through recharge. This amount represents the maximum sustainable annual yield for all groundwater systems. Irrigation salinity, waterlogging and rising water tables affect 200,000 hectares of land in southern NSW. Current production losses in southern irrigation areas are estimated to be $65 million per year. If nothing is done by 2015, it is estimated that these costs will increase to over $100 million per year. The impact of the dryland salinity has not been quantified fully for NSW but it is known to affect at least 120,000 hectares. Factors such as expansion of the irrigated agriculture industry, mineral water supply systems and a variety of other local and regional issues have helped push groundwater consumption in NSW to more than 1 million megalitres per annum. This volume represents 15% of the entire volume of water consumed in NSW each year. Nearly a fifth of water used nationally is groundwater. In many
areas, groundwater is the only water source. More than a million
people living in 600 cities, towns and small communities in Australia
depend on ground water for their drinking water supply. In NSW some
200,000 people are serviced by more than 130 schemes that are groundwater
based. Over-extraction of groundwater is a problem in some areas,
for example parts of the Namoi. Protocols ANZECC core indicators for groundwater
Other indicators Resource use indicators for ground water management areas include:
Indicators to determine the health of ground water systems include: ·
Monitoring of Groundwater for drinking purposes Ground water sources should be subject to monitoring at least once every 4 days for the presence of E.coli, total coliforms, and Enterocci. The Colilert method is specifically recommended as being independent of interference by heterotrophic plate count organisms. Testing for Clostridium perfringens every 2 weeks is also recommended as an indicator with longer persistence in water. A positive result for any of these organisms should result in the water source being taken off-line until the source of contamination can be identified and removed. General Groundwater Salinity Monitoring Physical parameters such as; Other suspected pollutants as required eg; Herbicides/Pesticides Costs Unavailable at this time Case studies Namoi Pesticides Study Maroota Groundwater Study (Hard Copy) Murray Darling
Meryl Pearce Flinders University Organisation contacts CSIRO – Land and Water |
Internal Links Algal Species Density and Diversity Desktop Monitoring Using Satellite Data Fish Monitoring for Water Quality |
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