South Australia will nearly double its normal water entitlements after flows to the Murray River increased to 8,000 megalitres this week.

The excess is the result of an abnormally full Lake Victoria, from which water is being diverted down into South Australia.

Jarrod Eaton, manager of water resource operations for the Department of Environment, Water and Natural Resources explains: “Lake Victoria at the moment is at about 90 per cent capacity, so that's slightly above where it would normally be at this time of year... we've got a process now where we're just minimising the amount of flow going into Lake Victoria, so it just means more flow down the river and into South Australia.”

Department sources also say that amount includes a significant portion of unregulated flows from upstream operations and rainfall.

Mr Eaton says there’s more good things to come: “So we're actually in what we call these unregulated flow conditions at the moment and that is due to the operation of Lake Victoria and also some of the recent rainfall along the River Murray but to have double your normal entitlement flow coming in the start of August - it's really good," he said.