The Basin Salinity Management Strategy (BSMS) guides communities and governments in working together to control salinity in the Murray-Darling Basin and protect key natural resource values within their catchments.

It establishes targets for the river salinity of each major tributary valley and the Murray-Darling system itself. These targets reflect the shared responsibility for action between valley communities and between States.

A key feature of the 15-year Basin Salinity Management Strategy is the adoption of a Basin target at Morgan in South Australia. The Basin target is to maintain the salinity at Morgan at less than 800 EC units for 95% of the time.

The targets are a way of measuring the progress towards achieving the Strategy's key objectives of:

• maintaining the water quality of the shared water resources of the Murray and Darling Rivers
• controlling the rise in salt loads in all tributary rivers of the Murray-Darling Basin
• controlling land degradation and protecting important terrestrial ecosystems, productive farm land, cultural heritage and built infrastructure
  
• maximising net benefits from salinity control across the Basin.

Annually Victoria reports to the Murray-Darling Basin Authority on its progress in relation to implementation of the BSMS. 

Murray Darling Basin Salinity Management Strategy: Victoria's Annual Report 2009-10 (PDF~2.1MB)