LAST month's record-breaking rains are set to cushion local irrigators from the savage – if not unexpected – blow of starting the new season with zero allocations.

On Wednesday, the Department of Water and Energy (DWE) announced there was insufficient water in the dams to provide irrigators with 100 per cent of their carry over allowance, let alone issue new allocations to high and general security users.

But the ominous assessment has been tempered by the fact that June's record rains, in which 74.8mm fell in Griffith, has delayed the need for the region's wine grape and citrus growers to irrigate their permanent plantings.

"At the moment it's not absolutely critical for high security users to start the season with an allocation," Murrumbidgee Horticulture Council executive director Karen Hutchinson said.

"The wetting up of the soil from the recent rains is going to assist the citrus growers with their frost protection, so in the current climate it's really not until at least September that high security irrigators are looking to irrigate.

"The DWE is reasonably confident of a turnaround in terms of high security allocations in the near future."

While the DWE announced there is sufficient water to meet critical domestic needs in 2009-10, allocations for Griffith City Council's town supply and stock and domestic will commence at just 50 per cent.

A DWE spokesperson said that although the recent rain over the catchment area was welcome, it had produced limited inflows into the Murrumbidgee Valley's storages.

"Unfortunately, most of inland NSW is still suffering from the worst drought in living memory and water availability in the southern and central Murray-Darling Basin remains serious," the spokesperson said.

"Across NSW total storage levels for State Water-operated dams, excluding the Snowy, are 4225 gigalitres or 22.6 per cent of total capacity – some 2.3 per cent lower than this time last year."

DWE will release its next assessment of water availability on August 15.