Farmers Attend Water Meetings

KBR consultants Chris Hewitt, Matt Bradbury, Angus MacDonald and Cameron Smith at the Kingaroy meeting on Tuesday morning

March 29, 2022

A series of meetings held as part of the latest phase of the Burnett Water Feasibility Study wound up in Kingaroy on Tuesday morning.

Meetings with consultants from KBR were also held in Blackbutt and Murgon on Monday.

South Burnett Regional Council had urged farmers to attend the meetings to explain how much water they required from three previously identified high priority water projects, (see below), and what they were prepared to pay.

Non-binding “expression of interest” forms were distributed at the three meetings which must be returned to the consulting company by April 11.

The farmers were told KBR will keep the information supplied on the forms confidential, however the data gathered will be aggregated as part of summary for their final report.

Principal economist Matt Bradbury, from KBR, led the forums.

He told southburnett.com.au the roll-up at the three meetings had been good, especially at Murgon where 45 people had turned up at Murgon Town Hall.

There were a dozen people at the Blackbutt meeting and about 20 in Kingaroy.

A second round of EOIs will be sought at a later point to determine a price point for the water in the three schemes.

The feedback collected and the expressions of interest received will provide Council with the information required before proceeding with the next stage of building business cases for possible infrastructure development.

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The three priority projects under assessment:

Blackbutt Growers and Irrigators

This project will investigate the options to provide new water to the highly fertile agricultural area of Blackbutt and Mt Binga by leveraging existing water infrastructure, including greater utilisation of the Wivenhoe pipeline. The project aims to identify any associated infrastructure requirements to deliver water from the centralised off-take to individual water users.

Barlil and West Barambah Weirs

This project will further investigate building new weirs on Barambah Creek to increase water reliability on existing allocations and/or provide new water allocations. Other potential solutions include the construction of Barlil Weir (135km upstream of its convergence with the Burnett River and about 8km north-west of the township of Murgon). The Barlil Weir could have a capacity of 1000ML and annual yield of 3000ML. This will also improve alignment of agricultural water allocations to demand in areas containing fertile soils. The potential construction of an additional weir at West Barambah is also being investigated as part of a joint strategy to address reliability to producers along the Barkers/Barambah scheme.

Converting the use of Gordonbrook Dam from urban water supply to irrigation supply

Gordonbrook Dam is a 6600ML storage that provides urban water to Kingaroy. This project aims to investigate and determine the best future use of the dam, with consideration of the water treatment challenges faced when the dam capacity falls below 50 per cent. This project will assess the viability of converting Gordonbrook Dam to irrigation-only use in the medium and long term.