Right now, it is very difficult to accurately measure the water losses from evaporation on farm dams but a recent scoping study funded by the National Program for Sustainable Irrigation estimated the loss is as high as 7,000 gigalitres per year from Queensland's section of the Murray-Darling Basin alone. Given that water extracted from our waterways for all purposes is around 20,000 gigalitres per annum in the whole of Australia, the potential savings from addressing evaporation losses are obviously worth pursuing.