Riverland fruit grower gets set to be smiling in spring

Since the receding of the flood, the Starrs Reach Vineyard managers have had little time to recover from the effects.

"We haven't had a chance to get too involved in the recovery yet, just through wine grape harvest and then five days later we were into orange harvest," Mr Alm said.

"We started the wine grape pruning last week and then we've got a couple sprayers going through the almonds and then Friday we'll start putting our herbicides through the almonds, so there's never a dull moment."

Mr Alm said he had started to engage with local businesses to assist in the recovery from the floods.

"I've engaged a contractor to start quoting a price for some earthworks for the recovery at one of the vineyards," he said.

"I've also engaged an engineering company from Loxton to get a quote on making a gantry for our pump at the home block in Pyap.

"A lot of these people are booked up for the next three to six months in advance, without even quoting on new jobs."

Despite a fear the water might become stagnant, Mr Alm said he didn't have to pump out any water from his three properties.

"I was concerned that when the water was receding the water may hang around and become stagnant and become a breeding pond for mosquitoes, but it dispersed pretty quickly," he said.

Mr Alm said the plan was to have the recovery from the flood finished by early spring.

"I'm hoping early spring, otherwise it's going to be chewing into our irrigation time and we'd be wanting to re-build pumps and won't have water available to us," he said.

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The biggest challenge during the flood, Mr Alm said was getting rid of the maggots growing in their irrigation systems in New Residence and Moorook.

"The biggest challenge we faced was the maggots growing in our irrigation system, from the high nutrient that was coming down from in the water," he said.

"Every hour we were having to clean the back-up filters out in the field, we were dosing it with different types of chemicals to try and eradicate what was growing in the mainline."

A PIRSA spokesperson said they had been assisting primary producers in their recovery from the flood event and identify impacts and recovery issues for primary production, with a community advisory committee being formed to offer communication between landholders and government.

The PIRSA spokesperson said 20 of the 27 Lower Murray River Irrigation Areas were productive land and had been inundated and required dewatering and recovery assistance, with 2,157 hectares covered and about 40GL of water required to be removed.

Out of the 20 agricultural irrigation areas requiring dewatering, nine are complete, nine are in progress and several expected to be finished in coming days.

The state government has been committed to returning agricultural areas to production as quickly as possible, with this requiring the flood water from the river to be pumped back into the river channel, the PIRSA spokesperson said.

"PIRSA in partnership with the South Australian Dairyfarmers' Association is co-ordinating the dewatering of inundated agricultural land in the Lower Murray region," the PIRSA spokesperson said.

"This is being done within existing regulatory requirements and with full consideration of environmental aspects such as water quality, pest species management and river and levee bank protection."

Consultation during the levee repair and dewatering process would help in the formation of wider decision making in the long term rebuild and future management of the River Murray levee network, the PIRSA spokesperson said.

PIRSA has provided a number of avenues for assistance for producers impacted by the River Murray flood, with the Primary Producer Recovery Grants and the Primary Production Irrigation Grants, along with other services including Family and Business mentoring.

For more information visit www.pir.sa.gov.au or call 1800 931 314.

For information on relief payments and the farm household allowance to eligible farmers provided by Services Australia visit www.servicesaustralia.gov.au.