The Victorian Government has refined its controls on some of Victoria's allocation trade to protect ongoing allocations to Victorian water entitlement holders.

This removes the need for ad-hoc suspensions which were necessary in the last two autumns, because of high storage levels and high use of carryover.

The new controls apply to trades of water allocation –

from the Goulburn, Campaspe or Loddon systems to either the Victorian River Murray system or to interstate; and

from New South Wales to Victoria (from 10 January 2013).

The controls are necessary to prevent situations where, when a trade occurs, the increased obligation to deliver water to users is not accompanied by storages receiving a matching secure volume of water. If there is no matching volume of water, there is less water available for new allocations.

Further details are available in a fact sheet here and the attached explanatory note.

The Goulburn limit is applicable immediately but there is at time of publishing plenty of trade opportunity (about 50 GL) and therefore all trades can still proceed unimpeded. The trade opportunity can be tracked at waterregister.vic.gov.au/Public/Reports/InterValley.aspx.

The NSW limit applies to applications received after 9 January 2013. The trade opportunity that would be available if the limit was in place can be seen by referring to the report under the heading Click here for the data that leads to the limits above at waterregister.vic.gov.au/Public/Reports/InterValley.aspx.