Who: Department of Sustainability and Environment, Southern Rural Water, environmental managers.

Timeframe: Ongoing.

The Government will establish a formal process for determining arrangements for the future operation, maintenance and any renewal of the network having regard to:

• The process for setting and allocating funding from the environmental contribution levy (currently every four years, with the next period beginning on 1 July 2012).
• Southern Rural Water’s water planning and price setting process overseen by the Essential Services Commission (currently every five years, with the next pricing period beginning on 1 July 2013).

Each planning period, the Department of Sustainability and Environment, in consultation with Southern Rural Water and environmental managers, will develop the forward operation, maintenance and renewal program, which will:

• Identify the cost of operating (monitoring), maintaining and renewing the network over the planning period, taking into account a planning horizon that extends beyond the period.
• Propose cost-sharing arrangements between the State, Southern Rural Water and environmental managers on a ‘beneficiary pays’ basis having regard to:

– the guiding principles in Policy 3.7;
– consideration of the minimum level of monitoring the State would perform in the absence of consumptive extraction; and
– the State’s current commitment to continue to pay the share of monitoring costs attributable to domestic and stock users.