Rural Metering Project

The Murray Darling Basin Metering Project is a program aimed at saving water, securing river health and growing Murray Darling communities.

Funded as part of the NSW Governments $1.36billion “Sustaining the Basin” initiative, the metering scheme will deliver  water savings that will be shared between the environment and community.

The “Sustaining the Basin” initiative contains a range of measures funded by the NSW Government as part of the Commonwealth Government’s “Water for the Future” program.

The measures look to increase the efficiency of water use and include upgrades to groundwater, unregulated and regulated river meters.

Regulated River Metering

Project costs: $90 million
Replace existing customer owned meters with State Water owned meters, connected via telemetry.
Meters will be high accuracy, tamper proof and low maintenance.

The project will reduce inaccurately metered extractions and minimise water theft in regulated systems as well as deliver substantial and lasting returns of water to secure real improvements in river health and assist NSW to meet its National Water Initiative commitments to implement a national water meter standard.

The NSW Metering Scheme should result in:

A non compliant metering setup

  • Potentially supporting local jobs during the installation phase.
  • Improved confidence in metering integrity and improved investment environment for irrigators.
  • Potential improvements to irrigated agricultural operations.
  • Improved security and delivery of water to legitimate users, including the environment, due to the reduction of water theft.

The Regulated River metering project is part of State Water’s involvement in the Federal Government’s Water for the Future plan, announced in 2008.

The image to the right shows a non compliant metering installation.

Groundwater and Unregulated water metering

Project costs: $131 million
Install or upgrade about 9,500 meters in the NSW groundwater and unregulated water sources in the Basin.
This will allow management of licences in unregulated and groundwater systems.
The scheme will ensure water meters are accurate and consistent with national water meter standards.
It will make accurate information on water usage available to water managers from sites previously unmetered.