Water is a vital resource we all need to live, work and play. This is why water needs to be managed fairly for all water users.
Southern Rural Water is responsible for water licencing and regulation in southern Victoria. We work with farmers, businesses, individuals, and the community to help them with water licences, understanding the conditions of their licence, and complying with the regulations.
It’s illegal to take and use more water than allowed under your entitlement or to undertake works without appropriate approval.
The Victorian Government and Southern Rural Water has a zero-tolerance approach to non-compliance.
Water theft, also known as unauthorised take, is an offence under the Water Act 1989 and can attract fines and court-based enforcement action.
Our approach to compliance and enforcement is risk-based and responsive. Our Compliance and Enforcement Strategic Plan sets out how we will ensure water users comply with their licence terms and how we will enforce non-compliance in southern Victoria.
The government has strengthened its compliance framework with robust legislation and policy to deter non-compliance. This includes amendments to the Infringements Act 2006, development of the Water (Infringements) Regulations 2020 and the Water and Catchment Legislation Amendment Act 2021.
Under new regulations, we can use Penalty Infringement Notices (PINs) to issue on-the-spot fines or enforce negative carryover for water users who go over their water entitlement.
We know in most cases unauthorised take is unintentional and we’ll work with you to resolve the problem. However, it’s a serious issue and we will investigate any negative balance and scale through an enforcement program.
We will be doing more inspections to detect water theft, including checking customers whose usage exceeded their entitlement in the previous irrigation season. We will also target areas where there are high volumes of trades and a history of non-compliance.
We remind water entitlement holders that they are responsible for managing their water use and should regularly read their water meter to monitor use against their entitlement.
We try to help our customers with alerts when they are approaching the entitlement volume, but we don’t guarantee that we will check or provide a warning.
If someone has an issue with their water meter, needs help reading their meter or wants to talk about a water trade to boost their allocation they can always talk to us on 1300 139 510.
We would encourage you to read our zero tolerance to unauthorised water take information below.