The Water Department says a new drainage and floodway system is already producing remarkable ecological benefits in some wetlands in the south-east of South Australia.
About 90 kilometres of floodways were built to join the lower and upper south-east by diverting thousands of megalitres of water into wetlands.
They include the Bakers Range watercourse around Lucindale and the West Avenue watercourse near Kingston.
The project was completed in May and the first delivery of water was last month.
Department official Andrew Johnson says the impact on the ecosystems has been dramatic.
"I was recently on site and on the one wetland I was at there were literally thousands of water birds and you could also hear the endangered southern bell frogs," he said.
He says a similar scheme has been proposed to pick up water further south and move it as far north as the Coorong.
"Historically, pre-European, all of the water that collected in the lower south-east was driven north and ultimately would have come out in the Coorong, but what we try to do is look at how do we recreate some of those flows to enhance the Coorong," he said.
"But importantly we also need to make sure that all the wetlands in the south-east have adequate water."