Southern Rural Water

Southern Rural Water (SRW) is responsible for managing irrigation districts, the regulation of surface water and groundwater licensing, and storage dams across the southern third of Victoria.

SRW’s service area covers 88,000 square kilometres, or 37 per cent of Victoria, stretching from the South Australian border to the New South Wales border, and from the Great Dividing Range to the Victorian coast.

Within this wide geographic area, SRW operates irrigation districts and manages take and use licenses from waterways, licences relating to catchment dams, farm dam registrations, seven major dams and eight diversion weirs. Water use is primarily for agricultural, urban and industrial purposes. SRW manages Victoria's largest groundwater operation and second largest non-metropolitan headworks business.

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Note: This map is indicative only. Please contact Southern Rural Water for more accurate and up-to-date service area information. You can also use our interactive map to check whether your location is serviced by Southern Rural Water.

Water resources

SRW manages the Macalister Irrigation District (MID) in central Gippsland and the Werribee (WID) and Bacchus Marsh (BMID) irrigation districts west of Melbourne. The majority of the water used in the irrigation districts is for primary agricultural production, along with stock and domestic and minor industrial use. Water shares are held by individual customers within the districts, and transactions are recorded in the Victorian Water Register.

Blue Rock Lake (part of the Latrobe River system) plays a major role in providing cooling water for Victoria’s brown coal power generation. These are bulk entitlements held by the various companies which own and run the power stations.

Blue Rock Lake and Lake Glenmaggie have environmental water entitlements (bulk entitlements and water shares respectively) that are managed by the West Gippsland Catchment Management Authority on behalf of the Victorian Environmental Water Holder.

Assets at a glance

Southern Rural Water operates and maintains a range of assets. This includes the following infrastructure, services and natural environments used for water supply, environmental or recreational purposes.