Regional Water Monitoring Partnerships

Water quality and quantity monitoring partnerships have been established in regional areas as a collaborative effort involving many organisations. These organisations include:.

• Department of Sustainability and Environment
• Rural Water Authorities
• Non-metropolitan Urban Water Authorities
• Catchment Management Authorities
• Murray Darling Basin Commission
• Australian Bureau of Meteorology
• Local Government
• Environmental Protection Authority
• Department of Primary Industries
• Melbourne Water
• Industry (i.e. power companies, paper manufacturers)

Four monitoring partnerships have been established in Gippsland, North East, North West and South West.

Each of these partnership committees has in place a regionally specific agreement for water resource monitoring, which has been signed by all organisations joining the partnership. Organisations that are currently not part of the partnership can become involved at any time simply by approaching the partnership for approval to join.

Services collectively managed by the partnerships include:

• Water quantity (hydrographic) monitoring
• Field collection of water samples and in-situ water quality parameters
• Laboratory analysis of water quality samples

Benefits of the Partnerships

• Monitoring partnerships deliver a number of benefits including;
• Ensuring a secure source of funds
• A coordinated approach to water resource monitoring
• Well defined transparent cost sharing arrangements
• Regional ownership / control
• Contracts for monitoring services
• Long data record at important sites
• Flexibility to add/remove or augment monitoring services as needs change
• Consistent quality control / quality assurance procedures across the state
• Documented methodology
• Removal of monitoring duplication
• Data freely available over the internet