Water entitlements: when the water and the land part ways

The two systems at a glance

Victoria

Unbundled: the share, the delivery and the use

Victoria pulled apart the old water rights and take-and-use licences in a reform it calls unbundling. The Victorian Water Register says each old entitlement became:

1. a water share, high-reliability, and low-reliability where people had had access to sales water;
2. a delivery share in districts, or an extraction share on waterways;
3. a water-use licence, or a water-use registration for non-irrigators.

It happened on 1 July 2007 for the regulated systems of northern Victoria and on 1 July 2008 for the Werribee, Bacchus Marsh and Macalister/Thomson systems in the south, and the Register notes that unbundling does not, at this stage, apply to groundwater, unregulated waterways or recycled water.

What a water share is

The Register describes a water share as an ongoing entitlement to a share of the water available in its system, with a volume that sets the most that can be allocated against it each year. Each season the resource manager announces allocations as a percentage of that volume, and the share is linked to an allocation account that tracks what is available, used and traded.

On the land itself, the Register makes four points. The share can be sold separately and need not stay with the property when the land is sold. Using water on land needs a water-use licence, and having it delivered in an irrigation district needs a delivery share. The share can be mortgaged, like land. And it carries a yearly entitlement storage fee, set by its volume. A share with no nominated water-use licence is called disassociated, and is held independently from land.

Checking a share, and transferring it

Anyone with a water share’s identification number can download its copy of record for $17.30 (as at October 2026). It shows the share’s volume, source, reliability, owners, trading zone and delivery system, any allocation or carryover against it, a description of any linked land, and recorded interests such as a mortgage or a limited term transfer.

To transfer ownership, the holder applies to their local water corporation, which approves a complete application that meets the local trading rules; the application then goes to the Victorian Water Registrar to be recorded, as land dealings are. The Register says some changes of ownership happen with a transfer of land, and its statistics do not separate those out.

New South Wales

A licence with its own register

WaterNSW says a water access licence is generally needed to take water from rivers or aquifers for irrigation, industry or commerce, and that the Water Management Act 2000 governs licences where water sharing plans have begun. The NSW Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water adds that, under section 60A of that Act, taking water from a specified source needs both a water access licence and a water supply work approval, unless an exemption applies.

NSW Land Registry Services keeps the Water Access Licence Register, an online record of every water licence in NSW, on behalf of the minister responsible for the Act, and has done since the register began on 1 July 2004. A licence must be on the register before its holder can take water under it, each licence has its own folio, and the folio records encumbrances such as a mortgage or charge. The registry adds that the State does not guarantee the register’s information.

Licences, licence entitlements and water allocations can be traded in water-sharing plan areas, and those trades are called dealings. WaterNSW says a change to an existing licence has to be registered with NSW Land Registry Services within six months of the dealing being granted, with the licence’s certificate of title, or the dealing approval can expire.

The search a buyer’s solicitor can ask for

WaterNSW runs a search for water-related interests held under the Act. It says these searches are usually done by a solicitor acting for a buyer, to:

1. find any approvals under the Act that may go with the property in the sale and pass to the buyer at settlement;
2. help the buyer judge the property as a commercial enterprise;
3. find any charges or restrictions on those approvals, if they are to pass to the new landholder.

Separately, WaterNSW’s NSW Water Register shows the status of licence applications, approved applications and their conditions, available water determinations and trading statistics, the registry says.