In the pipeline: $22m ‘water cocktail’ project underway at Lake Wyangan

A $22 million project to toughen water quality in Griffith’s beleaguered Lake Wyangan is underway, nonetheless the native council warns this could obtain years to quit. 

A federal executive grant of $3.475m for the lake project became announced this week as share of the National Water Grid Connections program.

Griffith Metropolis Council will match the federal funding, kickstarting the first stage of the multi-million-buck opinion for the waterway, which became formed in the 1950s the utilization of the remains of a gypsum mine and a natural swamp state.

In recent years, the lake —  in the coronary heart of the Murrumbidgee Irrigation Topic — has been tormented by salinity, fish kills and great-scale blue-green algae outbreaks, which would be being investigated for skill links to motor neurone disease. 

Griffith Metropolis Council overall supervisor Brett Stonestreet outlined how the council hoped the lake’s water quality would be improved by mixing water from just a few sources.

He stated the first stage of the project would include building a pipeline from the metropolis’s water reclamation plant to south Wyangan Lake, in a notify to acquire care of the northern allotment of the lake for recreation functions. 

Mr Stonestreet stated the south lake would be used as a “working lake”.

“We’re going to if truth be told use that as a mixing pond,” he stated.

“The water from the reclamation plant will attain into the south lake, there’ll be some fresh water coming in from the Murrumbidgee irrigation provide community and there’ll furthermore be some shandied water coming in from the north lake into the south lake.

Pipeline years away

The Griffith Metropolis Council has been engaged on the proposal for spherical four years and Mr Stonestreet has described the project as a advanced resolution to a advanced divulge.

“Indubitably the level of salinity (sic) is simply too excessive and that wants to be diminished to absorb principal enchancment out there,” he stated. 

Mr Stonestreet stated the second stage of the project would involve building pipelines to nearby farms for irrigation, as neatly as controlling sediment.

“We have already had an indication from the executive that they will provide principal aid in direction of making ready the detailed industry case,” he stated.

Mr Stonestreet stated while funding for the first stage of the initiative became now salvage, construction became aloof a mode off.

“Environmental impression statements will absolutely must be moderately undertaken, detailed fabricate … and engineering works will must be undertaken, nonetheless we’re looking out with the next couple of years to absorb the project on the floor,” he stated.

Mr Stonestreet stated the $22m project would absorb varied advantages.

“There’ll be environmental outcomes in relation to bettering the water quality, there’s going to be recreational outcomes for the neighborhood to expertise that lake another time and honest the ecology in overall.”