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DWE Home > Home > Water Management > Water data online >

Department of Water and Energy

Water data online

The Department operates Australia's largest water monitoring network. Water monitoring is required for:

• water resource assessment
• river operation and control
• compliance
• pumping control
• water distribution
• flood warning
• water quality assessment.

To this end the Department operates over 850 river, lake and storage gauging stations, collects water quality data from over 350 sites, manages a network of 3,000 groundwater monitoring bores, and records aquifer data from the 95,000 bores that have been sunk in NSW. At some 600 river gauging sites across NSW, river flow data is monitored continuously and this data is made available in near real time. For more information about water data monitoring, go to Why is water data collection important?.

The following water information is available on-line:

NSW Provisional River Data – you can find out for the last week and for the period of record for the site:

• the river height and the flow in ML/day at some 600 gauging locations across NSW
• the river salinity (electrical conductivity) and temperature levels at 180 sites
• the current storage levels and daily releases from the 22 rural storages operated by State Water.

This site is updated daily. The data is available by map or site list.

NSW Daily River Reports – you can find out the river flow and salinity and temperature data for the last week on a river valley basis.

NSW Storage Reports – you can find out:

• for the last week the storage volume, inflows and discharge from the 22 State Water operated storages (storage summary)
• for the last two years, graphs of the storage volume for each State Water operated storage (storage charts)
• allocation announcements for the current water year and historically for each regulated river valley (allocation report).

Data in these reports is contributed by DWE, State Water and Manly Hydraulics Laboratory.

NSW Water Quality Data Availability

In addition to the continuous monitoring of river salinity and temperature at 180 locations, DWE has collected a range of water quality data such as turbidity, phosphorus, nitrogen etc at specific locations. This site does not provide the actual archived data, but is a list of the water quality parameters that have been collected at each site and the period of record.

PINNEENA 9 is a DVD which contains the majority of information stored in the surface water archive. This information consists of daily stream flows, stream heights, storage levels, rainfall data, conductivity, water temperature, turbidity, pH & wind data. You can purchase a copy for $214.50 by emailing Pinneena@dnr.nsw.gov.au or by phoning (02) 9895 7922.

NSW Groundwater Works – this site provides a summary report on all licensed bores in NSW, for example, when they were constructed, water quality encountered, the lithology, depth water was encountered, etc.

Public Registers provide information on all Water Management Act licences and approvals and water trading statistics from 2004/2005 onwards.

Algal Alerts – the latest algal alerts are available from the media releases or by phoning 1800 999 457.

From the NSW Natural Resource Atlas you can access environmental data and maps for the whole State, or just one region, such as water, threatened species, soils , vegetation data.