Past review
The Mary Valley water supply scheme is located near the town of Gympie. Irrigation is used for fodder crops on dairy farms, improved pastures on grazing properties and for horticultural production.
The Mary Valley scheme has 259 bulk customers. These comprise 205 irrigators in the Mary Valley with 17,528ML of medium priority (MP) water access entitlements (WAE), and 51 in Pie Creek with 835ML of MP WAE.
Major water asset include the Borumba Dam, a concrete faced rock-fill dam with spillway consisting of reinforced concrete crest and chute with reinforced concrete walls which can hold up to 46,000ML.
The Mary Valley scheme includes a distribution system that diverts water from the Mary River into a system of channels:
- Calico Creek Channel
- McIntosh Channel
- Pie Creek Main Channel.
The QCA has released its final recommended prices for the Mary Valley scheme for 2013-17. The Minister accepted the QCA’s recommendations.
Mary Valley water charges
| 2013-14 | 2014-15 | 2015-16 | 2016-17 | |
| Fixed ($/ML WAE) | 20.81 | 23.38 | 26.07 | 27.40 |
| Variable ($/ML Use) | 8.30 | 8.51 | 8.72 | 8.94 |
Pie Creek water charges
| 2013-14 | 2014-15 | 2015-16 | 2016-17 | |
| Fixed ($/ML WAE) | 34.82 | 37.75 | 40.79 | 43.96 |
| Variable ($/ML Use) | 78.96 | 80.94 | 82.96 | 85.03 |
To maintain revenues, the balance not recouped by volumetric charges is recovered by fixed charges which are slightly higher compared to 2012-13. In Pie Creek, the volumetric charge is higher and the fixed charge lower when compared to 2012-13.
As current revenues are below cost-reflective revenues, the QCA recommends price paths where fixed charges increase annually by $2 per ML (plus inflation) until cost-reflective levels are reached. Volumetric charges are increased at inflation over the balance of the regulatory period.
This Seqwater water scheme review forms part of the review that the QCA undertook in 2012-13 for the Queensland Government: the Seqwater Irrigation Price Review 2013–17.
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 2013 to June 2017 – with prices moving in a direction that better reflect costs.
- Key to the findings were the recovery of Seqwater’s costs and the smoothing of future price increases.
- All Seqwater schemes will now have two-part tariffs consisting of a fixed (Part A) price per megalitre (ML) of nominal water allocation and a usage (Part B) price per ML of water use.
- For the majority of schemes, our recommended prices result in increases to fixed prices and reductions in usage prices.