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Small farms capture water before irrigators
10 Oct 2008
Dams on small farms are capturing more water than ever before, capturing a large percentage of runoff and exacerbating the crisis in river catchments and major storage inflows. In northern Victoria''s drought-stressed Loddon and Campaspe catchments dams are estimated to be capturing up to 124,000 megalitres of water each year. The CSIRO''s Sustainable Yields Project report found small farm dams were capturing an increasingly larger percentage of each catchment''s rainfall runoff in the past 10-12 years, CSIRO estimates that the amount of water being captured by small farm dams has grown from 6–8 per cent of runoff to 29 per cent. Irrigators fear their water security is being affected by the growth of lifestyle farm properties which is driving the development of new dams on small farms.
The Weekly Times, 10/10/2008
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