Past review
15/05/2012
The Lower Mary water supply scheme is located near the town of Maryborough.
The scheme has 177 bulk customers and incorporates the Lower Mary distribution system, which services 79 customers.
The scheme consists of two water storages, the Mary Barrage (which holds up to 12,000ML) and the Tinana Barrage (which holds up to 4,700ML).
Irrigators who hold 22,055 ML of bulk water entitlements for water drawn from the river.
The Lower Mary distribution system consists of four pump stations, 50 km of channels and four pipelines. It diverts water from Mary River to three sub-systems:
- Copenhagen Bend system
- Owanyilla Main Roads system
- Walker Point system.
The QCA’s recommended irrigation prices to apply to the Lower Mary bulk water supply scheme and Lower Mary distribution system for the 2012-17 regulatory period were published in May 2012. They are described in the Executive summary for each of our Final Report, 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.