Precious water lost as Lake William Hovell overflows

Published in Herald-Sun 23/07/08 ... archived 29/07/08

IT'S a sight to behold in a state where water is scarce.

Lake William Hovell, in the King Valley in northern Victoria, is full and thousands of megalitres of precious water is flowing over the dam wall.

But the water is not wasted. Eventually it will provide some benefit to people as far away as Adelaide, after running its course along the King River Valley, into the Ovens at Wangaratta then into the Murray for the long haul to South Australia.

But local farmer and deputy chairman of the King River Water Service, Malcolm Carson, wants the dam wall raised by a couple of metres, and another hydro power station put in to supplement the existing small hydro generator.

"It's a little dam with a huge catchment behind it," he said.

"Two metres added to the dam wall would double the capacity of Lake William Hovell, and a hydro would provide clean green power for nothing.

"There's 60km of reliable catchment running into this dam, and the inflows never stopped during the drought."

Mr Carson said Goulburn Murray Water's research shows only 2 per cent of water that falls into the catchment is actually captured, and filling an expanded dam would take no time at all.

"The State Government already owns all the land which would be covered," he said.

"They need to bite the bullet and do something."

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Original article here
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