From the air the pale green, swollen river is a striking contrast to the scarred, orange plains on either side. On the ground the water level is visibly rising by the minute over cracked earth, as millions of litres an hour are diverted from the Darling to a lake bed that was bone dry days ago.

There will soon be enough water stored to keep Broken Hill going for two years if necessary. But how much will be allowed to keep flowing downstream is the subject of an interstate feud as irrigators in South Australia beg for more water.

The NSW Water Minister, Phil Costa, said a decision on flows would be made this week, in consultation with other states, and possibly as soon as today at a meeting of the Murray-Darling Basin Council.

''We're working co-operatively,'' Mr Costa said yesterday, as he visited Menindee Lakes district to discuss the issue with farmers and State Water officials. ''We don't know how much is going to get through at this stage, but it looks like we have got a bit more water than we thought. We're very, very grateful for the rain.''

Lake Menindee, next door to Lake Pamamaroo, had been left dry, the water diverted away by a network of canals, said David Hariss, the deputy director-general of the Department of Water and Energy.

''It's a big lake but it's shallow, so you would see a lot of water just evaporating. It's a balance between storing some and letting the rest keep flowing.''

South Australia's Murray Irrigators group attempted to increase the pressure yesterday, saying there had been more than enough rain to share around, and saying NSW was blocking sufficient releases.

NSW irrigators on the Darling River were sceptical about the South Australian farmers' claim, especially after receiving news on Friday that they could take the full ''general security'' allocation allowed, rather than just the ''high security'' allocation they have been subsisting on for the last two seasons.

''If we were to just let 50 to 100 gigalitres of water go down the river to Lake Alexandria [in SA], it wouldn't do any good at all because the lake's so big,'' said a citrus farmer, Alan White. ''I don't mind which state gets it but it wouldn't make a difference letting a lot of it go to South Australia.''

Mr White's farm on the Darling uses between 5 million and 6 million litres of water per hectare each year, producing more than 1000 tonnes of oranges and mandarins for export. ''Some of the people who are older than me say we still haven't seen a proper drought. Maybe we have now.''