Purpose: Management of Groundwater resources in Western Australia.

Groundwater Resources stored in WRIMS (Water Resource Information Management System).

The intersection of groundwater Subareas with Aquifer boundaries (usually) define groundwater Resources, which are the units used by the DWER to manage environmentally sustainable limits of extraction for groundwater resources.

For the purposes of groundwater resource management, the state of Western Australia is divided into groundwater areas proclaimed under the Rights in Water and Irrigation Act. These groundwater areas are further subdivided into groundwater subareas. The subareas are not proclaimed under the Rights in Water and Irrigation Act, but are administrative boundaries used to manage the extraction and licensing of groundwater resources.

Groundwater Resources in this dataset are not always the intersection of a Subarea with an Aquifer. Additionally, the Groundwater Areas stored in WRIMS do not accurately reflect the official gazetted Groundwater Area boundaries. A program is currently underway (Sept 2005) to review both Groundwater Resource and Groundwater area boundaries. Please contact the data steward for more information.