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Southern Rural Water achieves milestones in sustainability, infrastructure, diversity, and water management in Gippsland

This year, we reached key milestones in sustainability, infrastructure, diversity, water management, and strategic planning, including carbon neutrality, water trade platforms, and enhanced accessibility for all abilities.

By news@gippsland - 28th November 2024 - Back to News

We've achieved great outcomes this year, including steps towards our environmental commitments, increasing diversity across our team, and investing in our infrastructure to secure Victoria's food and fibre industry. To support our customers, we launched a water trade platform for our Macalister Irrigation District customers, and are in the final stages of building a platform to support groundwater trade, which will be released to southwest customers in a trial phase shortly.

Southern Rural Water progressed in environmental sustainability, infrastructure, diversity, and water management, launching trade platforms and auctioning Macalister Irrigation District water shares

Advances in water management

In addition, this winter we successfully auctioned 1,000 megalitres of high-reliability and 441 megalitres of low-reliability Macalister Irrigation District water shares. We will also be selling 2,897 megalitres of seasonal allocation from the Macalister Irrigation District system through a series of online auctions starting in November and continuing through March 2025.

Across the state, we've completed essential safety upgrades at several sites including at Lerderderg Weir where we installed a new generator and solar power system that has improved site connectivity and enabled remote gate operation. These improvements will strengthen our ability to respond to rising water levels.

We completed a significant program of winter works in the Macalister Irrigation District. We replaced old Dethridge wheels with modern meters, upgraded regulator gates, and inspected key infrastructure across the district including the Cowwarr Weir offtake tunnel. We also installed earthquake monitoring equipment at Lake Glenmaggie dam, improving our preparedness and response to potential seismic activity.

Inclusive water access

At Blue Rock Lake, people of all-abilities can look forward to better access to the water for recreational opportunities in 2025. We've partnered with Better Boating Victoria to build a new $529,000 all-abilities pontoon with a wheelchair-accessible gangway, hoist, gangway gradient indicator and kayak launching platform. Works are planned to start early next year and will complement our existing all-abilities playground and picnic area.

Our significant investments in decades long infrastructure modernisation neared its end, with the completion of the Werribee Irrigation District modernisation, and the near completion of the Macalister Irrigation District 2030 modernisation.

We entered the next chapter of our strategic planning in both these irrigation districts, with discussions for a high-quality, reliable, recycled water product for irrigation through the Werribee Reconfiguration project and a region-building initiative to look at how we can support the Macalister region across the coming 50 years, as part of the Macalister Fresh project.

Diversity drives progress

Internally, we reached a significant milestone, with our leadership team equally represented by men and women. We were also delighted to appoint our first independent Aboriginal board delegate Jackson Chatfield.

Jackson is a proud Gunditjmara-Kirrae Whurrong man with deep connections to his heritage and significant water sector experience. We are confident his expertise and connections to Aboriginal and Traditional Owner perspectives about water and Country will help us deliver more good outcomes for Indigenous Australians in southern Victoria.

We've made excellent progress on our environmental commitments, now securing 100 percent of our energy requirements from renewable sources. We also partnered with Wannon Water to trade carbon credits that will help us reduce our greenhouse gas emissions as we transition to low or no zero emissions vehicles. Excitingly, we're on track to achieving net-zero carbon emissions in 2025.

Pictures from Southern Rural Water website.

Source: http://gippsland.com/

Published by: news@gippsland.com