Sandy banks have been exposed at Burrinjuck Dam with the water level dropping to 30.8 per cent this month.
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The dam has a capacity of more than one million megalitres, twice the volume of Sydney Harbour. At 30.8 per cent currently, there is about 307,800 Ml of water left in the dam.
A Water NSW spokesperson said the release of water to communities, landholders and irrigators in the Murrumbidgee Valley had caused the low level. Water had also been released into surrounding rivers to sustain their habitats, including native fish populations, they said.
Inflows to Burrinjuck Dam over the past year "had been among the lowest on record, the lowest six per cent of yearly records," the spokesperson said.
Last year was one of the top 10 hottest on record for Australia, putting rainfall out by about two years, the Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) reports.
It would take regular rainfall over a period of several months to break the drought and BOM predicts drier and warmer-than-average weather to continue in this area between March and May.
Rainfall was "the only source of inflow to the dam", the Water NSW spokesperson said. However, even at 30 per cent, Burrinjuck Dam's water security was "better than most" regional dams operated by Water NSW, the spokesperson said. Water NSW operates more than 40 dams across the state.
"Most drought-affected northern NSW dams [are] in single-figure percentages and the Keepit Dam on the Namoi River is all but dry," the spokesperson said.
The end of the high-demand summer growing season should see Burrinjuck's storage stabilise, they said, and added that downstream tributary flows from across the region would help to reduce demand for water to be released from the dam.
