Heavy rain is pushing the Goulburn River’s largest storage, Lake Eildon, to its limits and renewing fears that the rain, coupled with storage releases, will cause flooding down the Goulburn Valley.
Goulburn-Murray Water is increasing its releases to cope with the inflows and is using available airspace to reduce the potential peak flow from a storage spill, without exacerbating impacts from downstream tributaries.
More than 100mm of rain has been recorded above Lake Eildon, prompting warnings of minor flooding on the Goulburn River between Eildon and Seymour. Minor flooding is possible at Trawool on Thursday.
Farmers immediately below Lake Eildon in the Thornton and Molesworth area are concerned that the Eildon storage has been run at too high a level to cope with spring rains.
EIldon is currently holding about 98 per cent of capacity and G-MW pushed up releases from Wednesday afternoon to 12,000 Ml/day.
From 9am on Thursday, October 5, releases will gradually increase to 17,000-20,000 Ml/day.
Ed Meggitt’s Thornton business, Goulburn River Trout, suffered a multi-million dollar loss from flooding last October and he has been urging G-MW to give more weight to the flood risk in its management of Eildon.
He has been warned that the releases will go to 20,000 Ml, and said his property can cope with releases of that level, but believes G-MW will have to push the releases higher to cope with the inflows.
Farmers along his stretch of the river have been checking pumps and moving stock to higher ground.
Due to a wet catchment and rainfall in June, G-MW has moved to the wet operating scenario when determining its filling targets, in line with its obligations under the Victorian Water Act.
G-MW says these targets seek to protect the reliability of water entitlements, while offering some flood mitigation. This means filling targets remain relatively high throughout the season.
The new scenario adopted earlier this year aimed to have Eildon full by November 1 instead of October 1.
The Goulburn River was rising at Seymour and Murchison on Wednesday.
Shepparton recorded 65mm of rain up to 9am on Wednesday.
The rain has come at an opportune time for Goulburn Valley farmers, and provided the weather clears, should boost spring crops.
To stay up-to-date with the latest warnings, head to the Bureau of Meteorology website: http://www.bom.gov.au/australia/warnings/
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