The Lower Manning Irrigation Users Group met with MidCoast Water on Monday night to discuss rural extractors water restrictions and agreed on reducing pumping times and limiting extraction to five days per week.

 This will be reviewed again in a week in light of current river flows and weather conditions.

“We had the opportunity to discuss with the irrigators our long term plans for supplementing the Manning water supply with more off river storage and the development of the Nabiac borefield,” general manager Robert Loadsman said.

He added that irrigators did have some concerns about restricting their extractions when MidCoast Water customers were still able to use water outside as part of the level three restrictions, however MidCoast Water explained that customers are only allowed one hour every second day.

Historical river flow information was also discussed, with MidCoast Water able to present almost 70 years of flow information from the river gauging station at Killawarra, just upstream of where MidCoast Water extracts its supply from.