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Recovering degraded groundwater in the Angas-Bremer basin through community action

Created 16/10/2025

Updated 16/10/2025

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Recovering a groundwater basin degraded by salinity caused by an overdraft is difficult and involves significant conflict with the community. This paper discusses how a successful reduction in the overdraft of the Angas-Bremer Basin, South Australia, is being achieved through an innovative management program developed with extensive community involvement. The Angas-Bremer Basin is 50 km southeast of Adelaide adjacent to Lake Alexandrina. It developed rapidly as a irrigation area in the early post-war period before the introduction of groundwater management legislation. Groundwater salinity increases became evident during the 1960s and 1970s. Development was finally stopped in 1979, when formal management controls were introduced. By this stage, irrigation areas on the basin margins had ceased production due to encroaching high groundwater salinities. Groundwater salinities continued to rise, and in 1987 positive action was finally taken to recover the situation. The management strategy developed in 1987 involved the establishment of a new partnership between the water agency and the community water resources management committee. In this new partnership, the committee and the community accepted the responsibility for dealing with the problem, and the water agency adopted a supporting and facilitating role in the management process. An innovative five year management plan incorporating substantial restructuring with accompanying incentives was developed through this process and was endorsed by the community after considerable debate. This plan has fulfilled its aims and has now been updated by the community building on the success achieved over the past five years. The development of the Angas-Bremer management strategy illustrates the effectiveness of community involvement in implementing the major adjustments required to recover seriously degraded water resources .

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Field Value
Title Recovering degraded groundwater in the Angas-Bremer basin through community action
Language eng
Licence Not Specified
Landing Page https://data.gov.au/data/dataset/3c69f3b1-fcc7-4695-ac1c-28256802212a
Contact Point
Geoscience Australia Data
clientservices@ga.gov.au
Reference Period 20/04/2018
Geospatial Coverage
Map data © OpenStreetMap contributors
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Data Portal Geoscience Australia

Data Source

This dataset was originally found on Geoscience Australia "Recovering degraded groundwater in the Angas-Bremer basin through community action". Please visit the source to access the original metadata of the dataset:
https://ecat.ga.gov.au/geonetwork/srv/eng/csw/dataset/recovering-degraded-groundwater-in-the-angas-bremer-basin-through-community-action