Past review
15/05/2012
The Upper Burnett water supply scheme services irrigators near the towns of Eidsvold, Mundubbera and Gayndah.
The scheme draws water from the Nogo and Burnett Rivers. The scheme has 156 customers, with irrigators holding 26,870 ML of water entitlements out of total of 28,890 ML.
The scheme consists of a number of weirs and the principal water storage of Wuruma Dam on the Nogo River, which holds up to 165,400 ML. Irrigation water is used for citrus, small crops and dairy farming.
The QCA’s recommended irrigation prices to apply to the Upper Burnett water supply scheme for the 2012-17 regulatory period were published in May 2012. They are described in the Executive summary of our Final Repor which can be found below.
These recommendations were accepted by the Queensland Government, and the new price path came into effect on 1 July 2012.
This SunWater water scheme review forms part of the review that the QCA undertook in 2011-12 for the Queensland Government: the SunWater Irrigation Price Review 2012–17.
You can read more about the pricing review on our project home page. You can also view the submissions for the water schemes that we received, the consultants’ reports and issues arising from face-to-face consultation with stakeholders.
We recommended a new irrigation price path, to apply from July 2012 to June 2017 – with prices moving in a direction that better reflect costs. For the majority of schemes, our recommended prices result in increases to fixed prices and reductions in usage prices.
The irrigation revenue earned by SunWater in some schemes does not cover the cost of operating and maintaining irrigation assets. In these schemes, QCA could show the ‘cost-reflective’ price, but could only recommend prices that increased by up to $2/ML per year plus inflation.
The QCA’s recommended prices were accepted by the government.