Past review
15/05/2012
The Pioneer River water supply scheme is located near the town of Mackay.
The scheme has a total of 7 customers, of which only one has a water access entitlement for irrigation purposes.
The principal water storage is the Teemburra Dam, completed in 1996. It releases water to a series of downstream weirs and channel distribution systems.
Under the Pioneer Valley Resource Operations Plan, the Pioneer Valley Water Board (PVWater) holds a Distribution Operations Licence to pump water from the river and deliver it to irrigation customers in the Pioneer River WSS.
Approximately 250 irrigators are serviced by PVWater, which is responsible for the construction and maintenance of infrastructure associated with supplying water to these customers.
The QCA’s recommended irrigation prices to apply to the Pioneer River water supply scheme for the 2012-17 regulatory period were published in May 2012. They are described in the Executive summary of our Final Report which can be found below.
These recommendations were accepted by the Queensland Government, and the new price path came into effect on 1 July 2012.
This SunWater water scheme review forms part of the review that the QCA undertook in 2011-12 for the Queensland Government: the SunWater Irrigation Price Review 2012–17.
You can read more about the pricing review on our project home page. You can also view the submissions for the water schemes that we received, the consultants’ reports and issues arising from face-to-face consultation with stakeholders.
We recommended a new irrigation price path, to apply from July 2012 to June 2017 – with prices moving in a direction that better reflect costs. For the majority of schemes, our recommended prices result in increases to fixed prices and reductions in usage prices.
The irrigation revenue earned by SunWater in some schemes does not cover the cost of operating and maintaining irrigation assets. In these schemes, QCA could show the ‘cost-reflective’ price, but could only recommend prices that increased by up to $2/ML per year plus inflation.
The QCA’s recommended prices were accepted by the government.