Abstract
Protection of unregulated river flows is a difficult decision-making area under NSW water law. One area of contention, the definition of a river, has not been adequately resolved in NSW. This poses significant challenges for regulatory oversight where a river channel enters a densely vegetated wetland or otherwise loses its channel definition on a floodplain.
The NSW Floodplain Harvesting Policy, introduced in May 2013, intends to regulate landholder capture and use of floodplain runoff. It has unintentionally created a regulatory overlap with unregulated river access licensing in cases of lowland rivers under the NSW Water Management Act 2000. Prohibition of increased unregulated river extraction may be side-stepped if parts of the river channel network are treated as floodplain features. Demarcation of rivers from floodplain features is an important requirement for equity in water sharing.
The identity of a river is starkly different in upland, escarpment, mid-catchment and lowland settings. A robust method applying geomorphic techniques and diagnostic attributes is required to define what is, and is not, a river in lowland fluvial networks that experience channel breakdown in central and western NSW. A method has been developed from characterisation of channel types and breakdown classes in the lower Macquarie catchment. This has assisted in defining rivers in lowland settings that experience channel breakdown.