Water for the environment

What is water for the environment?

An environmental entitlement – ‘water for the environment’- is a legal right to water available in a storage, river system or specified place under rules and conditions, like other water entitlements held by other water users.

It is water allocated and managed specifically to improve the health of rivers, creeks, wetlands and floodplains. Healthy waterways are vital for the people, plants and animals that depend on them, now and into the future.

Environmental water managers plan to deliver water held for the environment to support plant and animal populations, improve water quality and build species resilience while the climate changes.

Over the past 100 years or so, most of Victoria’s major rivers have been dammed with up to half their natural flows held in storages to supply households, farms, cities and industries and provide security for dry times.

Water for the environment aims to replace some of the essential flows rivers had before they were regulated with dams, weirs and channels. The water is released when rivers and wetlands need it most to counter the impacts of reduced natural flows.

Water for the environment:

• stimulates animals like native fish to feed and breed (for example, cod and yellowbelly fish need to be able to move on to floodplains to feed)
• triggers plants to seed or germinate (for example, river red gums need flooding for seeds to germinate)
• allows fish and plants to move about rivers and colonise new areas
• moves carbon between rivers, floodplains and estuaries, an important process for food chains
• helps restore groundwater
• stabilises riverbanks through better plant growth, reducing erosion into the river
• flushes out salt along riverbanks and floodplains.

Changing flows

Instead of flowing naturally, with high flows in winter and low flows in the hotter months of summer, rivers now run higher when water needs to be delivered for farming and urban use. These changes have interrupted many of the natural river and wetland processes needed by native plants and animals to survive, feed and breed.

Water for the environment is released into some of these rivers and wetlands to improve their health and protect environmental values.

In rivers, water for the environment can be delivered to mimic some of the flows that would have occurred naturally before rivers were modified.

Water for the environment does not try to return rivers and wetlands to their condition before European settlement. Many rivers and wetlands are so modified that this is not feasible, but environmental watering can help minimise some impacts of these modifications on rivers and wetlands.

Managers of water for the environment generally focus on returning some of the small and medium-sized river flows important in the life cycles of native plants and animals.

In wetlands, water for the environment is focused on mimicking some of the natural wetting and drying cycles which plants and animals depend on for their diversity and long-term resilience.

Types of flows

It's not simply the amount of water flowing in a river that's important.

It's the entire environmental flow regime that matters, including the volume, timing, duration, frequency and quality of flows that are provided. Like the natural flow of rivers, different combinations of these provide a range of benefits for ecosystems.

Releasing small amounts of water, called 'freshes', through summer helps to maintain or improve water quality. Flooding in spring replenishes a river channel and provides soil and nutrients for floodplains, as well as being vital for waterbirds and native fish to breed.

You can find out more about the different types of environmental flows and their purpose on our environmental benefits page.

Page last updated: 18/12/24