Anxious eye on sky, rivers for Mallee croppers
SOUTHERN Mallee farmers are understandably anxious about having enough water to sow their crops this season.
SOUTHERN Mallee farmers are understandably anxious about having enough water to sow their crops this season.
Water from the skies and from their taps.
Most will still start sowing next month whether the season break arrives or not.
But modern no-till relies on heavy applications of chemicals to prepare the ground, with spray unit needing about 5000 litres of water each fill.
Water authorities believe it is only a matter of time, probably only days, before the Wimmera Mallee pipeline is shut down again and no one knows how long it will take for the emergency to pass.
Experts are now warning people to expect the toxic bloom to last into next month at least.
April will be a critical time for water.
Grampians Wimmera Mallee Water believes its emergency solution, to pump the water backwards from some country storages, will keep supplies up to the pipeline.
Water was only starting to trickle into some farm tanks last Wednesday when GWMW found algal levels had dropped sufficiently at the crucial Pental Island offtake to allow Murray River water to flow again.
GWMW is issuing daily reminders for people to expect the pumps to be again be shut down suddenly and to keep on-farm storages topped up.
This is the calm before the storm.
Because of the lack of warning of the initial shutdown, on March 4, many people remain distrustful of GWMW.
Some have accused the authority of “pulling the trigger” too early, when official warnings still place the progress of the red alert areal well upstream at Koondrook.
They claim their suspicions were confirmed with the decision to switch the pump back on last week.
GWMW spokesman Andrew Rose said the authority had “no choice”.
“The levels were well above the acceptable level according to Australian standards,” he said.
Mr Rose said turning the pumps on was possible due to two consecutive tests at Pental Island “being below the threshold”.
“The pump could still be turned off again at short notice should the concentration of blue-green algae increase once again to a level above the threshold.”
The science of attacking a blue-green algae is pretty much to leave it to nature.
Heavy rain and cold weather seem long distant from a baking and parched northwest Victoria.
NSW water deal backfires
A deal brokered by the NSW Government with some of the Murray Darling Basin’s largest irrigation corporations has short-changed the environment of the nation’s most precious resource.
Water trade’s tech battle
Corporate irrigators and their water brokers are using high-speed broadband and sophisticated software to beat the mob on lucrative inter-valley trades.