Water cash trickle for ‘stressed river’

Andrew Mathieson
ONE of Victoria’s most-stressed rivers will only get loose change from $3.6 million to fix local water catchments, according to an action group fighting to save the Moorabool River.
The group says the state funding falls well short of the millions of dollars needed to match report guidelines recommending assistance of $1000 for every megalitre missing from the river.
Funding allocated to the Corangamite catchment from the $3.6 million includes $839,000 for revegetation and maintenance of a 20km stretch of the Barwon River.
But the catchment’s management authority said the Moorabool River was one of several tributaries that would share in $403,000 as part of the “upper catchment” of the Barwon.
“Not at this stage do we have any specific details on the Moorabool,” authority river health manager Trent Wallis told the Independent.
A spokesperson for state Parliamentary Secretary for the Environment and Water, Michael Crutchfield, said the funding went to the catchment authority to allocate at its discretion.
People for a Living Moorabool spokesperson Cameron Steele said water catchment funding, which would also be shared on parks, “tends to be lumped into a bit of a pot”.
Mr Steele said Corangamite Catchment Management Authority, which he met last Friday, would use the money to tackle fencing and rabbit controls rather than water flows in the Moorabool.
“This part of works is only a part of the picture – the flows are a bigger part of the picture. We’re starting to make steps in the right direction for the river but it’s been flogged to death and it’s going to take a long while to revive the patient.”
Mr Steele said State Government had flagged an extra 2500 megalitres as an “environmental water reserve” for the Moorabool.
A proposal for a further 3000 megalitres from a Fyansford quarry would also give the river a major boost, he said.
But a scientific study five years ago found that the Moorabool needed at least 20,000 megalitres, which would cost up to $20 million.
“That’s just 25 per cent of what has been identified as what the river needs,” Mr Steele said.