Past review
15/05/2012
The Barker Barambah water supply scheme is located near the town of Murgon. It has more than 160 bulk customers holding the medium and high priority water access entitlements. The scheme consists of the following storages facilities:
- Bjelke-Petersen Dam on Barker Creek
- Joe Sippel Weir on Barambah Creek
- Silverleaf Weir on Barambah Creek
- Redgate Diversion Pipeline
- Redgate Relift Pipeline and Pump Station.
- Bjelke-Petersen Dam is the main water storage and contains approximately 700 ML.
The water from this scheme is used for irrigation purposes (mainly broadacre cropping), town water supply (four townships) and industrial purposes.
The QCA’s recommended irrigation prices to apply to the Barker Barambah water supply scheme for the 2012–17 regulatory period are outlined in the Executive summary of our Final Report, which can be found below.
These recommendations were accepted by the Queensland Government, and the new price path came into effect on 1 July 2012.
This SunWater water scheme review forms part of the review that the QCA undertook in 2011–12 for the Queensland Government: the SunWater Irrigation Price Review 2012–17.
You can read more about the pricing review on our project home page. You can also view the submissions for the water schemes that we received, the consultants’ reports and issues arising from face-to-face consultation with stakeholders.
We recommended a new irrigation price path, to apply from July 2012 to June 2017 – with prices moving in a direction that better reflect costs. For the majority of schemes, our recommended prices result in increases to fixed prices and reductions in usage prices.
The irrigation revenue earned by SunWater in some schemes does not cover the cost of operating and maintaining irrigation assets. In these schemes, QCA could show the ‘cost-reflective’ price, but could only recommend prices that increased by up to $2/ML per year plus inflation.
The QCA’s recommended prices were accepted by the government.