The Surface Water Science team in DCCEEW employs WaterNSW to monitor water quality at almost 200 sites every month within the major rivers and streams of NSW, through the State Water Quality Assessment and Monitoring Program (SWAMP). This data is used to understand long-term trends in water quality throughout NSW and to develop scores for the water quality index. An annual report is written for every major river and its tributaries within the Murray-Darling Basin as well as the major rivers of the North coast, Hunter and South coast catchments and published in the NSW DCCEEW Water Publications Library.

These reports include background information for each catchment including extreme events, catchment use, monthly rainfall, daily flow and dam capacity data. The reports also show the water quality index rating for each site within the catchment as well as water quality data. A new addition has been made to the 2022-2023 reports which includes long-term trends in water quality over the last 10 years.