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Water monitoring

Under the Water Act 1992, water resource investigations are carried out to allow effective planning for water resource development and environmental protection.

An ongoing program in the Northern Territory (NT) assesses water resources by collecting, organising, and analysing data about water:

  • occurrence
  • volume
  • flow
  • characteristics
  • quality
  • flood potential
  • usage.

Roles and responsibilities

In the NT, 3 agencies monitor water resources.

These are the:

  • Department of Environment, Parks and Water Security (DEPWS) – they measure and determine the state of the natural resource
  • Department of Industry, Tourism and Trade – they manage monitoring carried out by mining companies in compliance with mine management plans
  • Power and Water Corporation – they measure and determine water for public water supply.

DEPWS

DEPWS water monitoring is crucial for assessing and managing water resources. This includes activities like:

  • water allocation planning
  • environmental flow monitoring
  • flood risk assessment
  • flood response.

They’re responsible for:

  • overseeing a network of over 160 surface water sites and over 580 groundwater sites
  • gathering data on rainfall, river levels, river flow, groundwater levels, and water quality.

Key monitoring programs

Key monitoring programs include:

  • Ongoing monitoring of all water allocation plan areas to track groundwater level and stream flow against modelled predictions used for annual water allocations.
  • Management of flood warning infrastructure along key waterways as part of the NT flood warning system.
    • Ongoing flow measurements of flood discharges are required to ensure the accuracy of flood warning systems in our highly dynamic riverine environment.
  • Flood level monitoring and alerting for key transport infrastructure - including highways and railways.
  • Monitoring for future water supplies, to provide data for assessment, design and viability studies for future water supply infrastructure - including the Adelaide River offline storage (AROWS) project.
  • Monitoring for assessment of small and large scale water extraction projects outside of water allocation plan areas.
  • Groundwater monitoring programs to support Geoscience Australia’s ‘Exploring the Future’ program using aerial geophysics instrumentation to locate groundwater resources.
  • Groundwater monitoring program for managed aquifer recharge trial near Katherine.
  • Collection of surface and groundwater data to assess water resources within the CSIRO-led Northern Australian Water Resource Assessment and the department’s own land and water suitability studies.
  • Monitoring of water quality parameters in permanent waterholes in the arid zone as part of the Lake Eyre Basin Rivers Assessment (LEBRA) program.
  • Water quality monitoring and ecological health assessments for Darwin Harbour and selected river catchments of the NT to ensure good ecological condition of our waterways.
  • Groundwater quality monitoring for water allocation plans - Darwin region, Katherine region, Douglas-Daly region and Roper River.
  • Roper River fish movement study in collaboration with the:
    • Research Institute for the Environment and Livelihoods at Charles Darwin University
    • NT Fisheries
    • Yugul Mangi rangers managed by the Northern Land Council.
  • Water metadata (data about data) is collected when a monitoring site is initially setup, and updated over time as conditions at a monitoring site change.

Get data

To view the data collected, go to the NT Water Data Portal.