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All Current and Past Media Releases
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Media Release - Department of Water and Energy Date: 4 September 2009 CRITICAL WATER PLANNING FOR THE LACHLAN VALLEY NSW Water Commissioner, David Harriss, today announced that current flows in the Lachlan River will be continued to the end of October, at which time drought management plans are to take effect.
“A consequence of the ongoing drought has meant that critical water planning is required in the Lachlan Valley to preserve the available water for as long as possible,” Mr Harriss said.
“To ensure that future critical human needs are met, extraordinary resource management restraints are now required.”
“This means it will be necessary to restrict the river flow downstream of Condobolin with irregular flows of water to refill Lake Cargelligo Weir pool.”
“The Lachlan Critical Water Advisory Group has now recommended that the Lachlan River system can run the full length until the end of October. This is a positive improvement considering there was a real likelihood that the river would be restricted by the end of September.”
Mr Harriss said the town water supply to the village of Lake Cargelligo is secure, while the township of Hillston is supplied from groundwater. The small communities of Booligal and Oxley will be supplied by carting water from Hay when there are no useful flows in the Lachlan River.
Flows will also cease in the mid Lachlan effluent creek systems of Wallamundry, Wallaroi and Nerathong.
With little inflow into Wyangala Dam, the current storage capacity is at 6.8 per cent, holding approximately 83,000 megalitres.
“Unfortunately, the Lachlan Valley has been required to implement drought contingency measures for the last six years and there has been no substantial improvement.”
This water year, town water supply received an allocation of 50 per cent, stock and domestic licence holders received an allocation of 15 per cent, while high security licence holders received 10 per cent.
In July, the NSW Office of Water, in collaboration with State Water and Lachlan Valley Water, conducted a series of meetings in the Lachlan Valley to explain the current situation to landholders and to identify operational options that might be implemented, if no reasonable inflows are received.
“Until the current drought conditions improve, critical water planning communiqués will be released regularly by the NSW Office of Water to explain the management of water resources in the Lachlan Valley,” Mr Harriss said.
“These communiqués will describe the current resource availability, how and why it is being shared and outlines probabilities for improvement.” This information will be available from the website www.dwe.nsw.gov.au.
“These measures will be under constant review to ensure the available water resources are used in the most appropriate manner.”
“We all hope that adequate rainfall will ease the situation in the not too distant future, but we need to plan for the possibility of the drought continuing throughout the coming summer,” Mr Harriss said.
The NSW Office of Water works in partnership with local water utilities in regional NSW to manage town water supplies during drought.
The NSW Department of Industries & Investment provide transport subsidies for movement of water for domestic use and for water and fodder for stock. Information on assistance available to farmers and rural businesses during drought is available from the website http://www.dpi.nsw.gov.au/agriculture/emergency/drought/assistance.
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