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Waterways are an essential part of our life. [On-screen text: Adam Roszak, Melbourne Water, Senior Diversions Officer, Waterways & Catchments Services South East] They provide biodiversity, wildlife corridors and habitat. But crucially for us, they also provide valuable water for irrigation, for produce, all through the Yarra Valley. Water in our waterways is a precious resource and a limited resource. As we experience a changing climate over the years, there's often less water, particularly in dry periods.

Melbourne Water are the licensing authority for the Yarra Valley, Lower Maribyrnong and some of the western catchments. So if you take water from a river, creek or dam in those catchments, you need a license issued by Melbourne Water. And the license sets out the conditions as to when you can and can't take water, and how much you're allowed to take. So across all of our catchments we have what we call Streamflow Management Plans.

These are plans that are signed off by the Minister for Water that dictate how we manage the resource. The plan stipulates what irrigators can do and how much water they can take. But it also sets out levels that need to be in the waterway to ensure that there's essential environmental flows so that things like fish spawning, platypus populations, environmental initiatives, everything gets what it needs at the right time.

Anyone who has a license, who wants to take water from a river, or a creek, or a dam, we're responsible for issuing those licenses, the administration, and importantly, the compliance and enforcement to ensure that everyone's doing the right thing all the time. We work really closely with license holders on education and engagement to make sure they know what they should be doing, how they can read the meters so they can monitor their water usage too, which is a critical component of the compliance and enforcement framework that we have in place.

At Melbourne Water, we're lucky to be able to help farmers get the water that they need every day, through the right processes and through the right licenses, to ensure that their farming business is operational and profitable, but also that we get food on the table every day.

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[On-screen text: melbournewater.com.au]