About held environmental water licences
Use the held environmental water licences register to provides information on held environmental water entitlements in NSW. Entitlements can be statutory or non-statutory.
Statutory entitlements
Statutory entitlements are defined in section 8(b) of the Water Management Act 2000:
- water (licensed environmental water) that is:
- committed by an adaptive environmental water condition
- taken or permitted to be taken under a licence of an environmental subcategory; o
- taken or permitted to be taken under a licence of a class prescribed by the regulations for the purposes of this paragraph.
There are no entitlements under environmental subcategories or classes, so the held environmental water register only shows statutory entitlements committed by an adaptive environmental water condition on the water access licence.
Non-statutory entitlements
A licence is classified as having a ‘non-statutory’ environmental purpose by agreement between the department and the holder of the respective licence.
The department recognises that a significant number of water access licences are purchased and/or held for an environmental purpose in addition to environmental water defined under section 8 of the act.