Our irrigation network is central to the region’s prosperity and was the catalyst for it becoming a productive area for farmers and a great place for people to live and invest in.
But a healthy environment is also a crucial part of this. The 68,000 square kilometre area we manage water-related services in has incredible natural diversity, and it is essential we protect it.
While the irrigation infrastructure we inherited facilitated significant growth in northern Victoria, it has also disrupted the natural behaviour of our waterways and impacted the flora and fauna they nourish.
Climate change has further upset the environment’s natural balance and it is therefore vital we protect and sustain it for future generations.
We cannot reset the waterways to their natural state, but there are actions we can take to improve the health of the rivers, creeks and wetlands and the creatures that inhabit them.
A particularly effective way we have done this has been through constructing fishways on the barriers we have built in our creeks and rivers to support irrigation.
Fishways are structures that allow fish to bypass regulators and weirs, meaning they can travel freely between different stretches of river rather than being impeded by delivery infrastructure.
In 2021, we constructed fishways at Cohuna and Koondrook.
These fishways provided passage for fish between the Murray River and Gunbower Creek, leading to species such as Murray cod and golden perch being able to move freely between the creek and the river for the first time in more than a century.
Since then, we have also constructed fishways at Tea Garden Creek and Taylor’s Creek, with the latter being part of the Gunbower and Lower Loddon Fish Passage Works that will connect almost 1000 kilometres of waterways.
These fishways have been funded by G-MW, the Victorian Government and Victorian Environmental Water Holder and delivered in partnership with North East and North Central Catchment Management Authorities.
We often work with other agencies to deliver environmental outcomes.
Environmental flows are another example of this.
Environmental water is crucial to keeping waterways, and the plants and animals that depend on them, healthy.
We have seen environmental flows reinvigorate certain parts of our region, including the Gunbower Forest, Hattah Lakes and many of our local rivers such as the Goulburn, Campaspe and Loddon.
Our role in environmental watering is not simply to deliver the flows that are ordered, but to provide input to the planning of the deliveries to agencies — such as CMAs, and the Victorian and Commonwealth Environmental Water Holders — to ensure they can be delivered at the rate and times that maximise their benefits.
We continue working closely with environmental water holders and CMAs after the deliveries begin.
If we see flows from rivers and creeks downstream of storages respond to rainfall, we can work with the environmental water holders and CMAs to adjust the timing and amount of the delivery to accommodate these changes.
A major part of planning for environmental deliveries involves ensuring we can continue delivering water to irrigators and urban users.
Often while higher environmental deliveries are under way, our waterways can run close to capacity to deliver other orders from irrigators and urban users on top of this.
However, through extensive planning, we are often able to move water to where it will be needed in our delivery system, ahead of the environmental delivery to ensure we can continue meeting customer demands.
As with fishways built near regulators and weirs, managing environmental flows in this way means we can deliver positive outcomes for the environment while also delivering water for irrigation and urban uses.
Through careful management we can ensure irrigators and the environment prosper in harmony and that our region continues to thrive.
Charmaine Quick is G-MW’s managing director.
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