Farmers in the Macalister Irrigation District have been warned that it is unlikely there will be any spill entitlement from Lake Glenmaggie this year.
The usually reliable catchments of Lake Glenmaggie in East Gippsland have seen the storage level fall to around 76 per cent.
The storage currently held 135,433 mega litres (ML) or about 20 percent lower than the 10 year average for this time.
Glenmaggie “fills and spills” nine years out of 10. The last time the storage failed to spill was 2006 and 1983 before that
Maffra dairyfarmer Justin Johnston said the dam level was a concern.
He said his farm had “a few hundred mega litres remaining of its allocation, plus access to a bore.
With the price of temporary water from Glenmaggie at around $200/ML it was not economic to buy, he said.
“Fodder costs are through the roof with wheat at $480 a tonne, cereal hay between $360 and $390 and high protein hay at $550 to $600,” he said.
“Our pivot irrigators virtually don’t stop and our flood is watered every seven days.”
Mr Johnston, who is milking 800 cows, said he planted a lot more summer crop this year to utilise the water more effectively.
He also plans to start downsizing the herd to meet the demands of the season and the returns.
“Milk production will be down across our area,” he said.
MG Trading agronomist Gavin Lamb, Maffra, said it was still possible for a spill to occur before the cut off date.
“Irrigators are keenly following the forecast rain events and if that means a spill it would be fantastic news,” he said.
It had been a good irrigation season but a slow start to spring meant many irrigators had used 60 percent of their allocation.
He said should it not spill the options for using remaining water included drying off significant parts of the farm to keep some pasture in front of cows, choosing to drop production targets, or fill the feed gap with other sources.
Following two failed autumns and two failed springs the catchments were dry.
Southern Rural Water has concluded that based on current storage levels and customer usage, its model showed that MID irrigators would be allocated a minimum of 25% of their low reliability water should Lake Glenmaggie not spill before the cut-off date of December 15.
Manager Water Supply East, Terry Clapham said the early announcement would let people know early that a low reliability allocation would be possible earlier than usual.
However, if Lake Glenmaggie did spill before December 15, all water used to that date would be recorded as spill and the allocation would remain at 100% of high reliability with no low reliability water issued.
SRW had held an online auction for 2018-19 season allocation in the MID and further allocation auctions were planned for December and January and a permanent water share auction in February.
