About WARMPlan - Water & Resource Management and Planning in the Mallee

Background

WARMPlan 2001 is the marketing name of the Northern MalleeRegional Initiative, a project jointly funded in 1997 by the State and Commonwealth Governments in conjunction with Stage 3 of the Northern Mallee Pipeline Project. WARMPlan is a Drought Regional Initiative, which aims to enhance and add to the benefits of the Northern Mallee Pipeline on farm viability and sustainability. The WARMPlan project concluded in June 2001.

The Northern Mallee Pipeline Project

The Northern Mallee Pipeline is a 7 stage project to replace the channel delivery of water to Northern Mallee farms and towns with a pipeline supply from the Murray River. (see tables 1, 5 and the map below for details). This project will save approximately 50000 ML of water when completed. Table 2 shows actual water usage and savings over the last two years for Stage 3 of the pipeline. map of the pipeline area

Table 3 shows the water savings for each stage and the allocations of these savings to the environment, new users and increasing security of the remaining channel supply system. The savings are are mainly from reductions in evaporation and seepage from the channel supply and farm storage systems. table 3

Benefits

The benefits of the Pipeline were assessed in an independent study in 1999 by the Snowy Mountain Engineering Corporation and was found to include:

Additional allocation and management of environmental flows to the Wimmera and Glenelg rivers (see Table 4)
Improved in stream environmental conditions

Reduced weeds and feral pests due to channel filling
Improved salinity management due to decrease in seepage from channels
Improved farm management due to high quality water for crop spraying and ease of paddock use resulting from filling of abandoned delivery channel

improved quality of life from high security and high quality water supply
improved economic development potential with a guaranteed water supply
improved sociological development potential
increased environmental awareness of river systems

Partnership Agreement and Funding

In September 1995, a submission from Agriculture Victoria was directed to the Commonwealth Government under the Drought Regional Initiatives Program. The Federal election and the subsequent change of Government delayed approval for the project. Project activities commenced in April 1997 followed the signing of a Partnership Agreement in January 1997.

The agreement included funding of $1895 000 for:
Stage 3 pipeline construction $1275000
WARMPlan activities $ 620 000
and was to conclude on 9 January 1999. (2 years)

The project had the following objectives:

improved drought preparedness in the region
improved security of farm domestic and stock water
improved water management and reforms.

These were managed by Wimmera Mallee Water

encouraging the advancement of management of the land and water resources of the region at the farm and regional level
improved farm viability and profitability potential through the adoption of effective property management, risk management and drought preparedness measures.

These were managed by WARMPlan directly

Implemantation of WARMPlan 2001

implementation The WARMPlan Steering Committee soon after approval of the project in January 1997 employed a Project Manager and established an Implementation Plan with 9 objectives and a list of tasks and activities to achieve them. These objectives have provided direction to the WARMPlan Project.

Early uptake of the activities was less than expectation and expenditure rates were not in line with budget forecasts. The committee has twice asked for and received extensions to the time and coverage of the project.
Healthy Viable Mallee Farms