SOME INTERESTING FIGURES

Already, water trades in the 3 main Goulburn Murray Water regions - 1a Greater Goulburn, Murray - above the Choke and Murray - below the Choke are up 'year on year' to the end of May 2009.

Statistics from the Water Register suggest that trades and transfers for the same period (11 months) is up 13.6 % year on year. This refers to water trades in and from the 3 main Goulburn Murray Water regions - 1a Greater Goulburn, Murray - above the Choke and Murray - below the Choke. How much has actually been used?

A report from ABC Rural focuses on water use in 2007/08 (it will be interesting to see the result from this year - I suspect water use will be up - who views this differently?:

Goulburn-Murray irrigation water use down 43pc

ABC Rural - Wed May 27, 2009 2:27pm AEST

New statistics show a severe drop in the amount of water used for irrigation in Victoria's northern Goulburn-Murray region.

Figures released by the Bureau of Statistics for the 2007-2008 show a 43 per cent drop in the amount of irrigation water used in the region, compared to the year before.

The region's biggest irrigation area, the Goulburn Broken, had a 37 per cent drop - from 596,000 to 377,000 megalitres.

The amount of land used for irrigation also reduced by 13 per cent.

In the Murray, there was 59 per cent less water used and a 61 per cent reduction in the irrigated land area.

There were also small decreases for north-east Victoria.

Across the Goulburn-Murray, there was a 5 per cent drop in the amount of land used for irrigated and non-irrigated farming, to 4.6 million hectares.