Fresh solution for water woes

The hike, to as high as $3.43 a kilolitre before a 10-cent drop to $3.33/kL, has been the catalyst for many hundreds of thousands of dollars being spent installing leak detection units, poly-lined catchments, desalination units, and private pipelines in an area of one million hectares, taking in two-thirds of the Coorong District Council and a portion of the Tatiara District Council.

Coorong Tatiara Local Action Plan implementation officer Tracey Strugnell says water detection units have been widely adopted, enabling producers to monitor water flows and detect any unwanted leaks.

Producers have weighed up their options on different water harvesting alternatives to guarantee access to affordable, high quality water.

Ms Strugnell says the mains water price has even influenced land prices.

Producers have bought land with higher water quality to pipe and pump water to their properties which have poor quality groundwater.

Coorong Tatiara LAP has held several successful water security forums.

The Gubbins family, Coolana Angus, Chatsworth, Vic, are among those who have become self-sufficient for their water.

They have installed two variable-speed drive, solar-powered desalination plants at their Coorong properties – Hamilla Downs and Carinya – at a cost of $110,000 each.

Mark Gubbins says they are on-track to pay for themselves within five years, freshening up water with salinity levels of 5000 parts per million to 8000ppm pumped out of a wedge hole, and delivering it to troughs at about 200ppm. If need be it can be blended back with saltier water at 3000ppm.

“When we bought Hamilla Downs a decade ago, water was 90 cents/kL but in five or six years it increased to $3.43/kL.

“Our bill had risen from $15,000 to $80,000 just to water the cattle, which was eating into our profits.”

The desalination plant, driven by 41 solar panels, purifies the water at 35-40 litres a minute. This is stored in a 190,000L tank and then pumped eight kilometres to two holding tanks which feed 26 troughs across the property.

Hamilla Downs manager David Watson says up to 1000 cattle are watered off the system, which requires little maintenance except for filter changes. Cobalt is also added to minimise algal blooms.

“There have only been about two days in the past two years when we have turned on the mains,” Mr Watson said.