Big flush: Victoria’s largest water holders
The largest water entitlement holders in northern Victoria have been named, including a Canadian giant who owns a mammoth $600m portfolio.
Canada’s Public Sector Pension Investment Board has accumulated 8 per cent of high reliability water shares held in Victoria’s Murray River irrigations systems below the Barmah choke.
The Victorian Water Register latest water ownership report shows PSP’s Fresh Country Farms of Australia No.4 company holds 78,100 megalitres of below-choke HRWS, worth almost $600m on today’s entitlement market.
PSP leases most of its Victorian water to Olam International, which uses it to irrigate about 12,000ha of almond orchards.
State Street Australia holds another 89,700ML and Perpetual Corporate Trust 55,600ML of HRWS, but as custodians of water holdings they are not required to detail who owns the water.
By far the largest water holder in Victoria’s share of the Murray Darling Basin is the Federal Government, which owns 28 per cent of northern Victoria’s water entitlements – 697,700ML of HRWS.
The Water Register shows the Commonwealth owns 320,700ML or 28.7 per cent of the Goulburn system’s HRWS, 106,200ML or almost a third of Victoria’s above-choke Murray entitlements and 260,100ML or 26.7 per cent below the choke.
Above the choke the Victorian Environmental Water Holder has another 12,200ML of HRWS.
Commonwealth purchases of water entitlements and efficiency savings have cut average annual river diversions by 2.1 million megalitres under the Murray Darling Basin Plan.
It means irrigators, towns and industry are now diverting 27 per cent or 8.79m ML of the entire Basin’s 32.5m in average annual inflows.
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