Green light for ‘liquid gold’

THE Northern Midlands Irrigation Scheme has been given the go ahead by the state government and will see “liquid gold” flowing to the region, Primary Industry and Water Minister Guy Barnett says.

The scheme was initially designed for 13,000 megalitres of water and nearly doubled to 25,000 megalitres because of demand from irrigators.

Mr Barnett said it would allow farmers to diversify and expand into high value crops.

“It’s part of our plan to ensure that we can get to $10bn farm gate value by 2050,” Mr Barnett said.

“Just short of 10 per cent of agricultural land delivers more than 50 per cent of our agricultural production and that’s because of access to water.”

Local farmer George Gatenby said having a secure water supply would allow a shift to irrigated crops from what had been dryland crops. “Farmers have up taken the water for security supply, to ensure contracts, diversify into dairy, stone fruit, horticulture, berries, they’re all coming into the area, and that allows us to put more confidence in our investment,” he said.

“We used to be a merino operation and we’ve tripled our gross revenue in three or four years as a result of irrigation.”

Mr Gatenby said he believed demand had doubled because of increased land prices and being able to capitalise on those.

Under the plan, there will be three pump stations and 157.3km of pipeline installed to deliver high-surety water over a 180-day summer irrigation season.

The $146.88m scheme is jointly funded by the federal and state governments, with $36.72m from farmers through water purchases.

The business plan for the scheme has now been approved at a state level and will now be considered by the National Water Grid Authority.

Tasmanian Irrigation chief executive officer Andrew Kneebone said significant efforts were made to ensure the water supply was sustainable.

“We undertake a very conservation approach to determining the reliability of all our water supplies,” he said.

“There’s always a margin of error that we build into making the assessment about whether there is sufficient reliability in the water supply.”

Construction is due to start in October next year and scheduled to be completed in two years. It’s expected to create 90 full-time jobs during the construction period and 222 jobs directly and indirectly once it is completed.

Mr Kneebone said they were looking to develop 10 schemes over 10 years across Tasmania at cost of about $1bn.