The $6 million Cosgrove Stock and Domestic Pipeline project is underway near east Shepparton, VIC, with construction works beginning to upgrade the Tungamah pump station.
In Cosgrove, Victorian State Minister for Water, Peter Walsh, said the project would replace the current 120-year-old open channel system.
“I was in Cosgrove to announce this project in April this year and it is great to be back again so soon to mark the start of construction works,” Mr Walsh said.
Nationals Candidate for Shepparton, Greg Barr, said the Victorian Government had recognised the importance of upgrading Cosgrove’s water supply and provided $5.4 million to the project.
“It is vital that farmers have access to a reliable and efficient supply of water in order for them to grow their operations and invest confidently in the future,” Mr Barr said. “This in turn supports the economic development of the region.”
“This project will replace 85 kilometres of open channels with a pressurised pipeline, taking landholders from an outdated and unreliable channel network to a new modernised water supply system.”
The Cosgrove Stock and Domestic Pipeline will source water from the Goulburn system through an extension of the existing Tungamah piped water district, servicing the area currently known as the Shepparton Stock and Domestic Community Water Supply Scheme.
Mr Barr said the pipeline would also save 830 megalitres of water, to be cancelled out of the Broken system.
“This will provide irrigators in that system with more a reliable supply as well, and provides the potential for more unregulated flows to be passed through the system to benefit the environment it wet years.”
The pipeline is expected to be completed and commissioned in December 2014.
