The Board of Goulburn-Murray Water have praised the SES for its response to the floods.
G-MW Chairman Stephen Mills said, "Many of our customers have and will be impacted but it may be several weeks before we know the full extent. We are hoping that the crops will stand up, plantings will respond and customers will reap the rewards at harvest."
Mr Mills also praised the cooperation of all agencies involved in the flood response.
"The SES has shown terrific leadership and we have seen excellent cooperation and practical responses to rapidly unfolding events. On behalf of the Board I thank the emergency response teams and our staff for their tireless efforts to date," said Mr Mills.
Mr Mills said the Minister for Water, Tim Holding, was briefed yesterday on G-MW's response to the flooding, including monitoring its network of water storages, canals, rivers and channels and the prospects for the coming season and beyond with storages filling.
"Our storages are designed to harvest inflows and we are harvesting every available drop to maximise allocations for customers," said Mr Mills.
"We are all hoping this week signals a return to better seasonal conditions, and combined with the ongoing investment to modernise our channel network is a great confidence boost for our farmers and our region," said Mr Mills.
"Eildon has captured more than 280,000 ML of water since Friday. In addition, local run-off downstream of Eildon is generating flows of more than 58,000 ML a day at Goulburn Weir and totalling more than 208,000 ML since Friday. We are managing our operations to capture as much of these flows as possible in the downstream storages," said Mr Mills.
Many of G-MW's storages and delivery assets have been upgraded in recent years.
"This is first time some of these storages and delivery assets have been ‘wet' or operated under flood conditions since they were upgraded. We are very pleased with their operations and we will continue to monitor the network as the flows move through the region," said Mills.
G-MW will make its next allocation update on Wednesday 15 September 2010 and G-MW is obligated to allocate every drop in or on its way into storage in accordance with the Victorian Water Sharing Rules.
"We will also announce a monthly update to the seasonal outlook on 15 September and indications are we will see some significant improvements," said Mr Mills.
- ENDS -
Media Contact: Linda Nieuwenhuizen
Position: Manager Stakeholder Relations
Telephone: 03 5833 5776 or 0412 183 792