Potential Density of Domestic and Stock Rights

The Water Management Act 2000 (WM Act) establishes three categories of Basic Landholder Rights (BLR) in New South Wales: domestic and stock (D&amp;amp;S) rights, harvestable rights, and native title rights. Among these, D&amp;amp;S rights enable landholders to take water—without a water access licence or water use approval—from rivers, estuaries, lakes adjoining their land, or from underlying aquifers, for domestic consumption and stock watering. While these rights do not authorise the construction of water supply works without approval, they hold significant legislative priority. Under Section 5 of the WM Act, BLR, together with environmental water needs, are afforded higher priority in water sharing arrangements than most licensed entitlements, including general and high-security water access licences.

Despite their legislative priority and critical socio-economic role—particularly during periods of water scarcity—D&amp;amp;S rights are not required to be registered, recorded, or metered. Consequently, there is limited empirical data available to quantify the extent and distribution of water take under these rights.

This dataset aims to estimate the potential density of Domestic and Stock rights along NSW rivers by analysing property data within a 400-metre buffer zone of river frontages. By spatially identifying landholdings with potential river access, this analysis provides an evidence-based approach to approximating the scale and distribution of D&amp;amp;S rights. The findings will support improved understanding of potential water demand under BLR and contribute to ongoing policy review and water resource planning efforts across New South Wales.

The analysis involved completing spatial analysis (density-based clustering) from the NSW Land Parcel property data (GURAS) and from surface and ground water (SEED) datasets.

The density-based clustering analysis works by detecting areas where points (centroid of each NSW property) are concentrated and where they are separated by areas that are empty or sparse. This spatial analysis tool uses unsupervised machine learning clustering algorithms which automatically detect patterns, based purely on spatial location and the distance to a specified number of neighbours. These algorithms are considered unsupervised because they do not require any training on what it means to be a cluster, the determining factor is the minimum features that determine a cluster.

The clustering density classifications are allocated to all NSW land property locations (centroids) that coincide with Surface Water (SW), that is within 400m of a regulated or unregulated named water source. They are also allocated to Ground Water (GW) properties, that is any property greater than a 400m buffered area of a named water source. This spatial analysis was processed across all 36 NSW WSP&apos;s.

The three clustering density classifications applied to both SW and GW properties are:


LOW: land parcel properties clustered by a 500 or less minimum threshold
MODERATE: land parcel properties clustered by a 500 or more minimum threshold
HIGH: land parcel properties clustered by a 5,000 or more minimum threshold

Clustering density was symbolised as follows for a meaningful visualisation:


High density potential
Medium density potential
Low density potential

The results provide an evidence-based estimate of potential D&amp;amp;S property concentrations, supporting improved understanding of possible water demand and informing water planning and policy review processes in NSW.

As for the D&amp;amp;S survey region boundary, it is noted that the DCCEEW-Water group Water Policy team marked and identified a boundary for their domestic and stock survey. Their survey regions are based on the water management areas. However, they do not always coincide with a water management area or WSP boundaries. Therefore, new survey region layers for both surface water and ground water are created using the WSP layer and associated water source information.

The groundwater mapping only focuses on the major groundwater extraction areas in NSW (i.e. the inland alluvial groundwater sources and the Great Artesian Basin). There are other alluvial groundwater sources in NSW, however they are smaller in geographical extent and potentially covered by mapping of properties connected to rivers.

Tags: DCCEEW - Water, DCCEEW- Water Analytics, Groundwater, Surface Water
Organization: Spatial Services (DCS)