Water Quality Awareness Project

This project was aimed at monitoring water quality in two drainage systems in each mill area in New South Wales.

The project was run by the NSW Sugar Milling Co-operative Ltd with funding from the Sugar Research and Development Corporation and the CRC for Sustainable Sugar Production.

The following is a paper presented to the 2004 ASSCT conference summarising the findings from the three and a half year project.

Water Quality ASSCT Paper 2004 (PDF, 163 KB)
Water Quality Project Fact Sheet (PDF, 919 KB)

99% Irrigation Free

The NSW sugar industry is already a long way down the track to ensuring sustainable practices in the area of water management. Sugar cane grown in NSW takes one to two years to reach maturity and each plant requires at least 1500mm of water.

With less than 1% of the crop receiving supplementary irrigation and only during the spring and early summer period, the sugar produced in NSW is from a sugar cane plant that is 99% rain grown, relying on the favourable north coast climate to meet the crops needs. Thus, the main agricultural operation in the Northern Rivers does not draw significant quantities of water from the water catchment areas which would otherwise impact on the health of our local river systems and reduce the amount available for use for consumption.

Non-irrigation also ensures that run-off is reduced which limits nutrients finding their way into the waterways and impacting on the marine environment.

The New South Wales industry is in contrast with the sugar industry in other states, where up to 60% of the crop is irrigated, which can account for 50% of all irrigated land, making the industry the largest water user (“Independent Environmental Audit of the Sugar Industry in Queensland, New South Wales and Western Australia”, C4ES: Department of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries, 2004).

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