Flooding risk along Murray River

The Murray-Darling Basin Authority's head of river operations, Andrew Reynolds, said the Hume currently held about 80 per cent of capacity but still had significant airspace to manage flooding.

Speaking on Friday, Mr Reynolds said the authority was considering making pre-releases.

“We are getting to a high level confidence that the storage will fill for this season and we can start to think about making pre-releases.

“If they start soon it will be at modest rates and will work with downstream communities before we move to any more significant pre-releases.

“We will endeavour to keep them within the channel capacity where any flooding impacts would be minor.”

Tocumwal farmer Rob Locke is an advocate for improved water management and said the 2016 flood was man-made.

“There were lost crops and stressed livestock as floodwater inundated properties. We do not want to go through that again.

“Water managers need to stop their ultra-conservative approach and start more effective management of the resource.”

Mr Reynolds said the authority had to balance dam safety, manage storages for demands through the season and to help reduce flooding downstream.

“We will continue to evaluate conditions on almost a daily basis and reflect on historic records about how to manage the dam,” he said.

Southern Riverina irrigators are arguing for better allocations with the storages at such a high level.

Dartmouth is currently holding about 66 per cent.

The next allocation announcement is expected this week (August 1).

Mr Reynolds said they would manage airspace to limit flooding.

“If we get a significant inflow in the next while, and capture that in Hume and we get a follow-up event which happened in 2016, our capacity to mitigate that is limited.

“Since 2016 we have improved the (management) tools and our ability to assess what the outlook might bring, and we will continue to feed that into our assessment and will re-assess our releases on a daily basis,” Mr Reynolds said.