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11.8% of the total average run-off for the entire Australian continent is in Tasmania.
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Tasmania has twice the surface water resources of the nation’s biggest river system, the Murray-Darling, but a total land area of only 6.4% of the Murray-Darling Basin.
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Hobart has the second highest water consumption per household of all Australian capital cities but uses less than 1% of its catchment inflow. Compare that with Sydney, which uses 60% of its catchment inflow or Adelaide, which uses 77%.
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Hydro Tasmania (at 13,000 gigalitres) is the largest water user in Australia. But it does not extract any water from the river systems. It generates power but lets the water flow out again without consuming any of it.
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Tasmanian farmers achieve twice the return per megalitre of water used than the national average.
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Tasmania's total dam storage capacity of more than 24 million megalitres is nearly a third of the total storage capacity in Australia.
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Less than 1% of Tasmanian run-off is used for consumptive purposes. The main extractive uses of Tasmania’s water are irrigation (60% of the State’s consumption), urban water supplies (20%), industry (11%) and mining (4%).