‘Burra restrictions lifted
Down she came: water, water everywhere – and restrictions lifted in Korumburra.
KORUMBURRA’S stage two water restrictions will be lifted at midnight tonight (Tuesday), after massive downpours in recent days.
The lifting of the restrictions will see customers reverting to normal permanent water saving measures, which are standard across the state when no staged restrictions are in force.
“Substantial rainfall over the past two weeks has resulted in the Coalition Creek reservoirs filling to a capacity that has enabled the corporation to remove all water restrictions for the Korumburra area,” South Gippsland Water managing director Philippe du Plessis said.
Korumburra’s water supply system comes from three reservoirs. Coalition Creek and Ness Gully are small storages, with a combined catchment area of less than two square kilometres. According to SGW it was the recovery of the larger Bellview reservoir that was the key contributing factor to the increase in water levels.
Steady rainfall of 68mm over the week ending June 7, saturated catchment areas, with storage levels beginning to rise last week. Another 80mm fall between June 12 and 13 – a once in a decade rain event – adding even more, pushing up the total to 73 per cent of capacity.
“The swift recovery of these storages is uncharacteristic following such a dry summer, the combination of two wet weeks, which included a one in 10 year rain event, has resulted in a substantial increase in water levels and the corporation is now confident storages will recover to an acceptable level this winter period,” Mr du Plessis said.
But long time water infrastructure critic and recent McMillan electorate candidate for Katter’s Australian Party David Amor said the lifting of the restrictions was “total common sense”.
“We’ve had over 10 inches of rain this month already. If you look at the reservoirs, there’s been a massive change. Common sense has prevailed, if a little too late,” he said.
Mr Amor believes SGW still needed to do some infrastructure work to ensure the future of water supply. He is fiercely opposed to the corporation’s plan to connect to Melbourne’s water supply, arguing the town’s three reservoirs should be enlarged and repaired.
“We’re losing 60 litres a minute from the number two reservoir. I’ve done sums for the whole industrial area and included the three schools. We’re using less water than what is running out of number three reservoir,” he said.
“That’s a third of Korumburra using less water than what’s leaking out of that dam.”
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