G-MW says its latest project will leverage off Connections

G-MW has been granted $177.5 million federal funding to provide a further 15.9 gigalitres of water savings, through its planned Water Efficiency Project.

The WEP includes treating channels and meters throughout all six Goulburn Murray Irrigation Districts areas.

Asked whether it was "Connections Mark Two", G-MW managing director Charmaine Quick didn't disagree.

"I would like to think of it as the next phase of water efficiency programs and we are leveraging off the expertise and processes under Connections," Ms Quick said.

"The initial scope of works has been identified using the "efficiency optimisation approach", which was developed under the Connections Project's Reset Delivery Plan.

"This approach seeks to determine the best fit-for-purpose solution for the existing assets."

She said the $2.2 billion Connections project achieved its target of recovering 429GL.

But Ms Quick said Victoria still had to contribute 62GL to the water to be recovered.

"From what I see is that we are really down to the tail end of the process," she said.

"We are not talking about significant assets, but we will have some works to do towards the recovery of the 62GL."

In July last year, a senior Department of Environment, Land, Water and Planning bureaucrat said the parameters for Connections were announced when it was reset, in 2016.

"It identified the number of works it was going to do, for the amount of money left, and the amount of water to be recovered," DELWP Statewide Infrastructure and Rural Strategy executive director Andrew Fennessy said.

"It has always been known Connections was never going to modernise every part of the system.

"That was made very clear in 2016."

He said if the water was not recovered, the commonwealth would reinstitute buybacks.

But Ms Quick refused to be drawn on irrigator's claims Victoria only needed to recover 9GL, or that the 15.9GL water recovery under the WEP would fend off more buybacks.

"We feel like this is our contribution to the 62GL for the Commonwealth," Ms Quick said.

"We are contributing the 15.9 to the 62 - it is part of the prospectus.

"I just want to point out this project had to pass a rigorous socio-economic process - we are well and truly aware all projects don't have an impact on the socio-economic criteria that has been set out by Water Minister Lisa Neville and the commonwealth."

She said G-MW did not believe buybacks were good for the community.

'"We believe these off-farm water projects, like Connections and WEP, actually reduce water losses and have a positive socio-economic benefit," she said.

The two projects are the Backbone Transformation Project to rationalise and modernise channels and meters, throughout the GMID and the Shepparton East Project.

Ms Quick said they would not take water out of the consumptive pool.

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Ms Quick said under the WEP about 150km of channels and 150 outlets would be decommissioned, while 100km of channels would be automated and 850 meters upgraded.

"This is all subject to detailed reconfiguration plans and now we have the funding we can start working with landowners on the best configuration of our system, to meet their requirements.

"This is not about drying off farmers - it's about where we can provide an alternate supply point for a farmer, so we don't need to have those channels operating.

"It's about where we can reduce our footprint, but still maintain a service."

She said the WEP was small, compared with Connections.

"Connections saw G-MW decommission 5000 meters and install 9000 new ones - under Connections we treated 14,000 outlets, here we are taking around 1000."

She said irrigators would not bear additional maintenance costs from the upgrade.

"It's all factored in," she said.

"The last pricing submission saw a 10 per cent reduction, on average, across the board.

"When we decommission assets, that's actually saving us money."

G-MW would now contact irrigators, likely to be included in the two projects, to find out what they wanted.

"We have some ideas for the reconfiguration plan, it'll be a mixture of decommissioning channels, upgrading with plastic liner, clay or geosynthetic lining or remodelling of channel banks."