New reports address regional water challenges

Significant findings from two research projects designed to help the water sector and regional communities prepare for future drought challenges will be explored at a Mallee Regional Innovation Centre (MRIC) event in Melbourne next month.

The free event on Tuesday 24 June will feature the launch of the Managing drought risk through new water allocation outlooks report and a presentation by  Dr Tristan Graham from the University of Melbourne.

Attendees will also hear about a recently released report on the accumulation and management of blue green algae in water supply and treatment processes from lead investigator Dr Arash Zamyadi from Monash University.

MRIC consultant Tim Cummins and University of Melbourne research fellow Dr Tristan Graham.

Funded by the Australian Government’s Future Drought Fund, the two projects were led by MRIC as a partner in the Victoria Drought and Innovation Hub. Both were developed from discussions had with irrigators and water industry experts during MRIC’s first round of drought consultations in northwest Victoria.

“Seeing the value for Murray River water users in developing a new method of producing water allocation outlooks informed by streamflow forecasts that consider current catchment wetness, MRIC brought the key organisations together to collaborate on the project,” Tristan said.

“Working with the Murray–Darling Basin Authority, Goulburn–Murray Water and the Bureau of Meteorology, our research team at the University of Melbourne evaluated the performance of the new method against 10 years of records.

“We found it could accurately and reliably predict allocations over the course of an irrigation season, compared to the current method used to provide outlooks of future water availability.”

Tristan is keen to share the benefits of the new method, the successes and challenges of the project, and what still needs to be done to address the issues identified.

“While we can't yet introduce a new product for people to use, we have demonstrated its potential and highlighted some more work we need to focus on now,” he said.

“We have made some good progress in setting up for the transition to have the new and old methods running side by side, helping to reduce uncertainty for irrigators about future water allocations.”

Blue green algae project partners Steven Newham from Goulburn Valley Water, Dr Arash Zamaydi from Monash University, and Vijay Ignatius from Lower Murray Water.

The key to the success of the blue green algae project was also “putting the right people together to produce potentially quite profound results”, MRIC consultant Tim Cummins said.

“Blue green algae was a topic that came up in almost every drought consultation session we had, because during drought times algal blooms are much more likely to occur, and their presence can restrict water supply,” Tim said.

“Bringing university researchers together with Coliban Water, Goulburn Valley Water Lower Murray Water and Water Research Australia meant we could deal with the effects of agal blooms at the right scale, as the issue is too big to manage at the local scale and too hard to manage at a basin scale.

“Through the project we not only have a better understanding of the efficiency of the full water treatment process, but we know what microorganisms – as well as blue green algae – are present, allowing us to address the challenges they pose and improve treatment efficiency and water quality.”

Find out more and reserve your place for the event. Registrations are essential and can be made until 12pm, Friday 20 June.