Werribee South farmers are paying more than four times more for water than those in Gippsland.
Southern Rural Water supply manager Edward Smith said the Werribee and Bacchus Marsh irrigation system was the most expensive in Victoria.
He said farmers in Central Gippsland’s Macalister irrigation district, also covered by Southern Rural Water, were paying about $80 a megalitre, while Werribee South farmers were paying an average of $360. The water used by farmers in Werribee South is a combination of recycled water from the Western Treatment Plant, groundwater, and water from three reservoirs.
“The main reason [for the price difference] is [Macalister] has one relatively big storage and we have three relatively small ones,” Mr Smith said.
He said the Macalister district had more customers, meaning the cost could be spread more widely than in Werribee South. Work undertaken by Southern Rural Water on reservoirs to keep them up to national standards also drove the higher prices, he said.
Discussing the upgrade now under way of an 80-year-old concrete channel system to a piped system, Mr Smith said the project would increase water efficiency delivery to market gardens.
Responding to suggestions by market gardeners that the upgrade was pointless when farmers were receiving only 15 per cent of their water allocation because of low storage levels and the priority should be securing water, Mr Smith said they would still be better off than they were now once the upgrade was completed. “We’re now delivering water at about 55 per cent efficiency. The current system is unreinforced concrete … it leaks. We lose half the water we’re putting into the system.
“If we pipeline, it’s about reliability of the water entitlements.”
