The Water Allocation Decision Support System (WAdss) was developed to allow the social,

economic and environmental trade-offs of water allocation, access and pricing decisions to be

assessed concurrently across both groundwater and surface water systems. This development

was funded by the CRDC. Systems exist for the Namoi and Gwydir Valleys. Workshops

have previously been run with regional State Government Agency staff, CMAs and irrigators

on these systems. Considerable interest was expressed during these workshops in the

approach however since that time little progress has been made on ensuring adoption of these

systems in these Valleys. One block to further adoption is acceptance of the approach by

State Government. At least two factors have limited this adoption in the past: State

government staff were not in a position to take up the approach given uncertainty in roles and

responsibilities with major restructuring of Government Departments underway; and, the

approach needed to be applied more broadly across the State to be part of a State wide

decision making, policy or planning approach. This project aimed to raise awareness of the

WAdss method in NSW and Queensland and to scope out the potential for greater use of the

existing WAdss applications and possibilities for the development of new applications.

Meetings have been held with interested agency and CMA staff in NSW and Queensland, and

potential future avenues for adoption and new applications have been identified.