THE Snowy River has gained an allocation of 40 per cent on its water entitlements, outperforming most Victorian irrigation districts.

But the volume of water flowing down the iconic river this spring has been cut to a trickle under the 2002 inter-government deal to revive it.

On January 31 this year, 63,369 megalitres were allocated to the Snowy Water Savings Entitlement Register, against 158,808 megalitres of Goulburn, Murray and Murrumbidgee entitlement.

However, under the 2002 deal between the NSW, Victorian and federal governments, a third of the water, 21,123 megalitres, must be diverted to a River Murray Increased Flows Account each year.

The Snowy Hydro Corporation controls this account and has retained the bulk of the allocations.

Once the Murray Account takes its share, just 42,246 megalitres remains to flow down the Snowy River.

However, that flow is cut even further due to the NSW and Victorian Governments' 2002 decision to borrow about 65,000 megalitres from Snowy Hydro before any irrigation water savings or entitlements had been recovered in the Murray Darling Basin to divert down the Snowy River.

The three-year loan allowed former Victorian Premier Steve Bracks and his NSW counterpart Bob Carr to decommission the Mowamba Creek aqueduct in 2002, an event that received widespread publicity as the state leaders donned waders to paddle around in the Snowy River's upper reaches for the cameras.

As a result of the blowout in the Mowamba account no more than 38,000 megalitres can flow down the Snowy River until it is repaid, resulting in Mowamba repayment of 4246 megalitres this season.

The 38,000 megalitre allocation is supplemented by an annual base flow from Snowy Hydro's Jindabyne Dam wall of 9000 megalitres.

The joint-government enterprise Water for Rivers, which was charged with delivering the 212,000 megalitres of mainly irrigator entitlements to the Snowy River and a further 70,000 megalitres to the Murray River, expects it will be able to deliver 215,00 megalitres of entitlement against which water can be allocated next January.

But Victorian Greens water spokesman Greg Barber said too much of the water recovered by WfR was low or general security entitlement that was nothing more than "paper water".

The entitlement register shows about 40 per cent of the entitlement is NSW and Victorian general or low security water.

However, WfR chief executive Neville Smith said the deliveries simply reflected the drought conditions and things would improve.

"When it rains everyone will be sorted," Mr Smith said. "But at the moment we all have paper water."

Victorian Farmers Federation water council chairman Richard Anderson said the Greens and Snowy River Alliance lobbyists should accept that they were doing a lot better than many Victorian irrigators.

Fellow irrigator and Murrumbidgee Irrigation chairman Dick Thompson said everyone should remember the flow at the mouth of the Snowy River was still close to 60 per cent of natural level, compared to nothing on the Murray.

"And what about those irrigators on general security water who've had virtually nothing for years?" Mr Thompson said.

But Snowy River Alliance chairman John Gallard said that unless the Snowy River gained high security water it was not worth having.

"The proof is in the Snowy's flows, which, after seven years, are only 4.5 per cent (of their natural flows at the river's headwaters)," Mr Gallard said.

"We're not even making reasonable repayments on the Mowamba borrowings."