Carryover was introduced in northern Victoria in early 2007 as an emergency drought measure. It allows individuals to carry over some unused water allocation for use in the following season. After the initial success in 2007/08, carryover  was made permanent later that year, with a future review flagged to investigate ways to improve the rules for all water users.

This review was outlined in the Draft Northern Region Sustainable Water Strategy, which proposed consideration of some initial changes for the coming season prior to completing the review before 2010.  A two-month formal consultation period on the proposals in the Draft Strategy, consisting of 38 regional briefings and 177 public submissions, included discussion of changes to carryover rules. Following this, the Minister for Water recently announced that for the 2009/10 season, the limit on carryover would be increased from 30 to 50 per cent of entitlement volume. See full media release.

In addition, a paper has been released to seek feedback on the proposed final carryover arrangements to be implemented for 2010. This proposal seeks to overcome the limitations of the 100 per cent rule. It introduces the ‘spillable water account’, which allows entitlement-holders to retain their carryover when allocations reach 100 per cent, while there is available capacity in the storage. See the full proposal paper below.

Proposal for future carryover arrangements (PDF~151kb)

The project team has discussed this proposal at a series of meetings with key groups, particularly customer committees of Goulburn Murray Water and Lower Murray Water.

Meetings

The slides presented at these meetings can be found below. Project Update 6 also provides more information about the proposal and issues brought up in these meetings.

Carryover presentation (PDF~159kb)Project update 6 - Carryover (PDF~465kb)