Wimmera Mallee recreational lakes desperate for secure water supply

A one per cent cut to Grampians Wimmera Mallee water entitlements would secure supplies for its ten recreational lakes.

Vital supply: The Wimmera Mallee’s ten recreational lakes, such as Lake Lascelles at Hopetoun (pictured), are crucial to western Victorian communities. Picture: Zoe Phillips

The 3000 megalitres of water used to fill Western Victoria’s 10 recreational lakes and town weir pools has all but dried up.

None of the lakes have access to reliable water, forcing the Grampians Wimmera Mallee Water corporation to fill them using a 20,000 megalitre pool of “growth water” it originally set aside in 2010.

But GWM Water has been obliged to slowly sell off its growth water to repay its customers’ contribution towards construction of the Wimmera Mallee pipeline, which created water efficiency savings from replacing the region’s leaky earthen channel delivery system with a pipeline network from 2006 to 2010.

Nearly all 20,000ML of growth water has now been sold to mineral sands projects, smaller businesses and to supply the South West Loddon Pipeline, leaving little to fill the lakes.

Recreational Water Alliance chair Adam Campbell said there was a desperate need to find a permanent and reliable supply, as the 3000 megalitres the lakes currently relied on was low reliability water.

“The lack of open water throughout our area means they’re (the lakes) a huge part of our communities and one of the few outlets for us,” he said.

VRFish chairman Rob Loats, who has long campaigned for secure recreational water across the west, said in 2006 former Bracks Labor Government Water Minister John Thwaites promised the Wimmera-Mallee lakes would be supplied with water as secure as that delivered to farmers in 96 years out of 100.

On January 30, 2006, Mr Thwaites’ office sent a letter to VRFish stating the 3000ML recreational lakes’ “allocation will have a high level of delivery security similar to farm water supply”.

However while current Water Minister Lisa Neville had honoured the Bracks Government’s promise to share water saved from the Goulburn Murray Water Connections Project in independent Suzanna Sheed’s electorate, Mr Loats said she had failed to do the same in the Wimmera Mallee.

Ms Neville said “we recognise the importance of recreational water – the positive health, social and economic benefits it can have – but any changes would need to be carefully considered and weighed against everyone’s needs”.

Mr Campbell said Ms Neville could solve the problem with the stroke of a pen.

He said GWM Water’s Headworks Operational Review Committee had found a simple one per cent cut to all water users’ entitlements across the region could boost recreational water reliability to 96 per cent.

But he said the Victorian Environmental Water Holder and some local catchment management authorities refused to support what most farmers regarded as a “tiny cut” that would deliver certainty for the whole community.