Govt's lack of questions about missing Chaffey water labelled 'bizarre'

In the 2018/19 financial year, 6000 megalitres from Chaffey Dam was "unaccounted" for, with the state government pointing the finger at extremely high river transmission losses due to the dry conditions.

NSW Shadow Water Minister Clayton Barr said it was "wacky" the government wasn't investigating further and the community was entitled to answers.

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"No one seems to be interested in why the numbers don't add up," Mr Barr said.

"If you can't make it square up, you should want to understand in detail and at length where it went.

"In the reporting framework, there are multiple opportunities to allocate that water into a category. I don't know how they get to the end of a report and say this stuff is missing."

In the past decade, the Peel Valley has only had one other instance of unaccounted water. In 2010/11, one per cent of the water was unaccounted for.

Mr Clayton said given a large quantity of water was recently lost - close to one-fifth of the water released from Chaffey - the government should provide a more detailed explanation.

"It was dry last year and the year before - there's been dry years previously and all the water has been accounted for," Mr Clayton said.

"It's bad enough that we lost it, but let's explain it to make sure it's not lost again.

"What's to say whatever caused the problem, how do we guarantee that we won't magically lose that water again next year?"

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The Leader asked NSW Water Minister Melinda Pavey if believed an investigation was warranted into the missing water.

In a statement, a spokesperson for Ms Pavey said not all inflows, such as those from smaller creeks, and not all losses, such as seepage in to groundwater, were measured in the system.

"In most years, the unmeasured inflows to the system exceed the unmeasured losses and these inflows are included in downstream tributary inflows," they said.

"During the drought, unmeasured inflows have been very low, so the unmeasured losses have been higher and is termed as 'unaccounted for water' as the actual losses are not able to be measured.

"These smaller tributaries have an impact on 'end of system flows'. For example, in 2013-14 'end of system flows' were higher than 'inflows' as a result of tributary inflow into the Peel River."