In the 2019-2020 financial year the Natural Resources Access Regulator (NRAR) undertook 509 property inspections, issued 171 formal warnings, 153 penalty infringement notices and commenced 15 prosecutions.
NRAR also finalised 1367 investigations of alleged breaches of NSW water laws, an increase of almost 70 per cent year-on-year.
The statistics were released in NRAR's annual progress report, which highlights the achievements of their second year as the state's water cops.
NRAR Chief Regulatory Officer Grant Barnes said the past year had seen drought and bushfires put a spotlight on the state's river systems.
"Despite the challenges NSW has grappled with over the past 12 months - crippling drought, widespread bushfires and a pandemic - NRAR has built on the solid foundation it laid in its first year of operations to become a best practice regulator," Mr Barnes said.
In 2019-20 NRAR also equipped officers with new technology including the use of satellite imagery, drones and motion-activated surveillance cameras to ensure compliance with water laws.
The report used their compliance work during the first flow event in January and February 2020 as an example of how satellite images were used.
"Several temporary restrictions on water take, implemented under section 324 of the Water Management Act, were in place to protect these first flows and ensure flows met specific downstream targets," the report read.
"The challenge for NRAR was how to effectively monitor water take restrictions."
The report said to solve the problem they partnered with MDBA and Geoscience Australia to monitor water at 3503 on-farm water storages, using the Open Data Cube library of satellite imagery for Australia and the National Computational Infrastructure supercomputer.
"We used Geoscience Australia's Digital Earth Australia Waterbodies tool to determine changes in water surface areas across selected dams," the report read.
The report said the satellite data, along with the aerial images reviewed, revealed 368 sites of initial interest. This number was reduced to 28 after NRAR's teams undertook detailed analysis of the sites.
