New South Wales Consolidated Acts

SNOWY HYDRO CORPORATISATION ACT 1997 - SECT 32

32 Local water extraction

(1) Despite anything to the contrary in this Part, a person (other than the Snowy Hydro Company) may be granted by the Water Administration Ministerial Corporation under the Water Management Act 2000 an access licence, water use approval or water supply work approval, that is authorised to be collected and stored by the Snowy water licence, in the Snowy water catchment.

(2) The Snowy Hydro Company is entitled (subject to any relevant terms of the Snowy water licence) to charge any such person a fee for taking that water that:

(a) is agreed by the Company and the person, or

(b) in the absence of agreement, is determined by the Independent Pricing and Regulatory Tribunal to be a reasonable fee not exceeding the loss of revenue from the reduction in electricity generation because of the taking of the water.

(3) However, the Snowy Hydro Company is entitled to charge persons designated in the licence as existing extractors (and their successors) only for the taking of an amount of water that exceeds, in total for all such extractors from the whole of the Snowy water catchment, a net amount of 3 gigalitres a year.

(4) Despite anything to the contrary in this Part, the Director-General of National Parks and Wildlife is entitled to take and use free of charge, for the purposes of the National Parks and Wildlife Act 1974 , water that is authorised to be collected, stored and used under the Snowy water licence. The entitlement under this subsection is limited to a net amount of 100 megalitres of water a year.

(5) For the purposes of this section, the "net amount" of water taken over a period is the amount of water extracted over that period less the amount of that water that is returned to the Snowy water catchment over that period.