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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88,000 km2
Service Area

12,018
Rural Customers

733.3b litres
Rural Water Supplied

168
Employees

$34.4m
Annual Revenue
Aboriginal acknowledgement
Southern Rural Water respectfully acknowledges the Traditional Owners and custodians of the land on which it operates across southern Victoria, and it pays its respects to their Elders, past, present and emerging.
Service area
Southern Rural Water’s service area covers 18 regional local government areas, the Melbourne urban councils, 11 of the Victorian Integrated Water Management areas and several Catchment Management Authorities.
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.
assets
Board of Directors
The Board of Directors is responsible for Southern Rural Water’s strategic planning and is accountable to the Minister for Water for the corporation’s performance. The Board is supported and advised by the Executive leadership team, who oversee the corporation’s day-to-day management under the leadership of the Managing Director.
Find out more about Southern Rural Water's Board of Directors and how they are appointed.
More information
Website: www.srw.com.au
Address: 88 Johnson St, Maffra VIC 3860
Postal: PO Box 153, Maffra VIC 3860
Phone: (03) 5139 3100 or 1300 139 510
Email: srw@srw.com.au
The information on this page was sourced from Southern Rural Water’s 2017-18 Annual Report, and direct from Southern Rural Water.
Page last updated: 19/10/22