Basin Salinity Management Strategy
The Basin Salinity Management Strategy (BSMS) guides communities and governments in working together to control salinity in the Murray-Darling Basin and protect key natural resource values within their catchments.
It establishes targets for the river salinity of each major tributary valley and the Murray-Darling system itself, that reflect the shared responsibility for action both between valley communities and between States.
A key feature of the fifteen-year Basin Salinity Management Strategy is the adoption of a Basin target at Morgan in South Australia. The Basin target is to maintain the salinity at Morgan at less than 800 EC units for 95% of the time.
The targets are a way of measuring the progress towards achieving the Strategy's key objectives of:
- maintaining the water quality of the shared water resources of the Murray and Darling Rivers;
- controlling the rise in salt loads in all tributary rivers of the Murray-Darling Basin;
- controlling land degradation and protecting important terrestrial ecosystems, productive farm land, cultural heritage and built infrastructure; and
- maximise net benefits from salinity control across the Basin.
It provides a stable and accountable framework that, over time, will generate confidence in how we are tracking our joint efforts to manage salinity. Details of the Strategy are available on the Murray Darling Basin Commission’s website.
Annually Victoria reports to the Murray Darling Basin Commission on its progress in relation to implementation of the BSMS.
Murray Darling Basin Salinity Management Strategy: Victoria's Annual Report 2007-08 (PDF~1.8mb)