Coleambally Irrigation Cooperative Limited's Water Smart Australia project

Coleambally Irrigation area, Murrumbidgee, NSW

Total funding: $13.99 million, with $8.05 million (GST inclusive) from the Australian Government and $4.9 million (GST inclusive) from the Coleambally Irrigation Cooperative Ltd (CICL) and it's irrigators. Remaining funds are from third party sources with interests in the project.

About the project

The project will role out the latest precision irrigation techniques and contemporary water data technologies over the Coleambally irrigation region to maximise production and reduce the environmental footprint of irrigation. Precision irrigation instruments and systems, including but not limited to soil moisture monitoring, deep leakage monitoring, irrigation application rate optimisation, outlet controllers and automation will be installed to more precisely match water application to crop water needs.

Project benefits

The project will:

generate approximately 2.57 GL per year of water savings which will be made available for environmental use;
result in a 10-20% reduction in salt interception through reduction of on-farm recharge;
enable public communication of real time data; and
complement the system harmonisation research work being undertaken under the Regional Irrigation Business Partnership program which aims to maximise return of irrigation investment and reduce the environmental footprint of irrigation activities.

The project will advance the National Water Initiative objectives of increasing the efficiency of water use in agriculture and assist in returning over allocated systems to sustainable levels of extraction.

Progress

This project has many elements. Progress on some of the elements is outlined below:

Over 127 flumegate meter outlets have been installed. These replace dethridge wheels which are much less accurate.
Work is being undertaken trialing technology to increase the automation of on-farm irrigation systems.
Soil moisture monitoring is underway. Over the 2009-10 summer 34 probes were installed on 12 farms. This is in addition to 108 probes installed between 2008 and 2009. Grower training sessions have been conducted on the use of soil probe data.
Work is underway to improve the robustness of the remote groundwater monitoring system at the prototype site.
A web based hydrological information system has been developed called 'the Coleambally IRIS (Integrated River Information System)'. It allows farmers to access information on water table depth, soil types, land use, water resources, climate variable and aquifer characteristics. The information available through the system, will assist farms to better manage their irrigation water.

Implementation of some elements of the project are behind schedule due to the impacts of the drought and continuing low water availability.

Water Smart Australia projects are funded by the Australian Government's Water for the Future initiative.