This Friday (May 15) will mark the final day of the irrigation season before our Winter Works program begins.
The program takes place every year from May 16 to August 14 during the irrigation off-season when we do not have our usual water delivery obligations.
This allows us to undertake key maintenance activities such as channel repairs, desilting and weed treatment.
The works program is a key part of ensuring the reliability and efficiency of our delivery network for our customers, so that they can access water when and where they need it during the irrigation season.
Our teams work hard to ensure the program focuses on assets and areas across our network that most need improvement.
This year’s Winter Works will focus heavily on improving our existing assets to maintain reliability and future service.
That includes replacing or rehabilitating ageing culverts, syphons and bridges across our network.
It also includes delivering improvements to more than 10 kilometres of channel across our network.
Our aquatic weed treatment program will also take place during Winter Works and will see weeds treated in about 300 kilometres of channel.
Channel dewatering during the irrigation off-season will allow us to combine natural die-off of weeds through cold weather, frost and exposure to the sun with direct spraying using contemporary herbicides.
Weeds affect water flow, promote silting and cause problems with our automated gates, which can reduce the ability to deliver water to our customers.
The extensive experience, knowledge and dedication of our staff greatly benefits the weed treatment program we can deliver during the irrigation off-season.
This year’s treatment program will also see about 70 kilometres of channel desilting works taking place.
Drone technology will also play an important role during the works, helping our teams assess more channel areas for silt build up or weed growth by identifying ‘hot spot’ areas across our network.
This means we can cover more areas in a quicker timeframe.
About 60 Goulburn-Murray Water staff will be deployed across the region during our Winter Works program, as well as contractors.
Lastly, with Winter Works about to start, it’s important to remind customers that from this Friday (May 15) the legacy version of our water ordering platform WaterLINE will no longer be available.
That means when our next irrigation season kicks off on August 15 2026, customers will need to use the updated version of WaterLINE to place their water orders.
This version has been available since November last year with many of our customers already using it to place orders and check their water use and Allocation Account (ABA) balances.
You can find out more about the new WaterLINE, and register for any upcoming drop-in information sessions, by visiting our online engagement platform: https://yoursay.gmwater.com.au/waterline