In a little over a month, Goulburn-Murray Water’s 2023-24 irrigation season comes to an end.
Throughout the season, we have fulfilled more than 100,000 water orders and delivered more than 1.4 million megalitres of water.
When the season ends on May 15, our water planners will take a well-earned break, however, for other parts of our business, the irrigation off-season is an exceptionally busy period.
This is because the three-month off-season is when our Winter Works Program takes place.
Without our usual water delivery obligations, we can dewater various parts of our delivery network to undertake various maintenance and improvement works.
These works include weed treatment, de-silting and refurbishing channel banks, all of which ensure the delivery system is in the best possible condition for the next irrigation season.
Water is often still required for livestock farmers during the irrigation off-season.
Some irrigators also want to have water in reserve to spray their orchards when there is frost or to water their vegetables in case of a dry winter.
Because we cannot guarantee water to irrigators during this period, it is important customers who still want to use water during this period make alternate arrangements to secure water, such as filling their tanks and dams.
While the works on our delivery network take priority, our Distribution Teams help customers by approving Out of Season Agreement submissions — allowing some water to still be delivered during the irrigation off-season — where possible.
However, for customers who have not had such an agreement approved, the final day to place orders is May 10.
Before the season ends, we also encourage our customers to consider their carryover options.
The option to carry water over depends on the system water entitlement holders are based in.
Customers in the Broken, Bullarook, Campaspe, Goulburn, Loddon and Murray systems all have the opportunity to carryover unused allocation, however, the rules between these systems vary.
People with unused water that wish to carryover must link their allocation account to a water share, limited term transfer of a water share, or supply by agreement before Friday, June 28.
Unused allocation will automatically carryover as long as it is held in an allocation account linked to your water shares.
As a courtesy, our Customer Experience Team proactively reaches out to customers who are at risk of having water written off to remind them about their stranded allocation.
Each season, this extra work our Customer Experience Team undertakes saves thousands of megalitres from being written off.
In comparison to the 1.4 million megalitres of water we deliver throughout the year, this is a relatively small amount but, for a lot of our customers, there are quite significant financial implications, so we do what we can to ensure they have all the information to make an informed decision.
I encourage people exploring their carryover options to use the Victorian Water Register’s carryover calculator.
It shows how carryover, spills and allocations affect the amount of water available under customers’ entitlements in different scenarios.
The calculator can be found on the Victorian Water Register website: https://www.waterregister.vic.gov.au/
For further details on carryover and the rules that apply to different systems, people can visit the G-MW website: https://www.g-mwater.com.au/endofseason
For more information on options for unused water, phone G-MW’s Customer Experience Team on 1800 013 357.
Charmaine Quick is G-MW’s managing director.