G-MW began its off-season channel and infrastructure maintenance works on Saturday, May 16.
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Goulburn-Murray Water began its winter works program on Saturday, May 16, making the most of the irrigation off-season to undertake key maintenance of its infrastructure.
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Running until August 14, the project will include extensive works on G-MW’s channels, pipelines and regulators, ensuring that the corporation is able to meet demand in the 2026-27 irrigation season.
G-MW’s general manager for infrastructure delivery services Alan Shea said the works would provide benefits to customers.
“A key focus of this year’s program is repairing and remodelling channel banks, which will improve water delivery and flow,” Mr Shea said.
“We’ll deliver improvements to more than 10km of channel across our network.”
Works will include the repair or replacement of several culverts, syphons and bridges, in areas such as Cohuna, Gunbower Island, Macorna, Durham Ox, Picola, Kaarimba, Strathmerton, Katamatite and Echuca.
G-MW has a narrow window to complete the maintenance works, with the irrigation season ending on May 15 and opening back up on August 15.
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Further works will include about 70km of channel de-silting and 300km of weed removal.
Weed removal will include the use of the chemical Flumioxazin, a herbicide that G-MW has used since 2021.
Flumioxazin is ideal because it can be used to target specific weeds and has minimal environmental impact.
“The de-silting and weed treatment works will improve water flow and delivery reliability to our customers,” Mr Shea said.
Mr Shea said that G-MW would also use drones to aid the maintenance works.
“We’ll undertake an extensive ‘hot spot’ identification program using LIDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) technology on our drones,” he said.
“This means we can cover more areas in a quicker time frame.”
A drone inspects some of the thousands of kilometres of G-MW irrigation channels.
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