Northern Territory Managed Aquifer Recharge (MAR) Investigations – socio-economic costs and benefits of existing schemes and of a MAR pilot scheme in Upper King River

This project will develop a conceptual pilot scheme in the upper King River catchment overlying the Katherine Tindall Limestone aquifer (TLA), aimed at increasing storage in the aquifer and future-proofing the Katherine Water Allocation Plan against reduced rainfall climate scenarios.

The project will undertake advanced hydrological and hydro-geological analysis and modelling of three recharge scenarios, including:
• an unconstrained direct to aquifer recharge scenario;
• a constrained direct to aquifer recharge scenario determined by the NT’s Surface Water Take in the Wet Season Policy; and
• a second constrained direct to aquifer recharge scenario assuming high source water turbidity.

This analysis will help to operationalise recharge schedules, explore potential impacts on key groundwater dependant ecosystems, and key locations such as the Katherine airport and the Venn Irrigation district.
The analysis will determine groundwater travel time from the MAR borefield using particle tracking and pressure propagation methods.

In addition, ownership arrangements, and various scheme specifications will be explored.

The project will undertake research into the socio-economic costs and benefits of using MAR in the NT. This will be conducted using case studies of existing NT MAR schemes and the planned pilot MAR scheme in the Katherine region.

The outcomes of this project will be a report on the MAR pilot project in Katherine and a report on the Benefit-Cost Analysis of exemplary MAR schemes in the Northern Territory.

The project will inform analyses frameworks for potential MAR scheme opportunities in the wider Cambrian limestone karstic aquifers in the Top End.