SA water allocations in doubt

The chief executive of the Murray-Darling Basin, Wendy Craik, says water allocation in South Australia for the rest of the year could depend on autumn rain.

She says rainfall for the coming weeks does not look promising and the Menindee lakes are not holding enough to flow into South Australia.

Currently the water storage in the southern Murray-Darling Basin is about 19 per cent of capacity, slightly lower than recent figures.

Dr Craik says because of current conditions water allocations remain in doubt.

"I would say the outlook is not good, we do know from the planning that we've done that we believe we'll be able to assure critical human supplies for you know, human consumption and stock and domestic for the coming year, but allocations are going to depend very much on how much rainfall we get in and inflow we get into the system," she said.

"If you look at the correlation between autumn inflows and subsequent inflows, if you have a dry autumn... there's a higher chance of having a dry rest of the year."