Irrigation Journal Summer 2010

The Official Journal of Irrigation Australia IRRIGATION AUSTRALIA – LEADERSHIP IN IRRIGATION TRAINING, INFORMATION AND REPRESENTATION.

www.irrigation.org.au

IN THIS ISSUE ■ GETTING BACK TO BASICS – SOILS AND IRRIGATION

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CONTENTS

REGULAR ITEMS

ON THE FRONT COVER One way of improving water use efficiency and making precious water savings is to upgrade farm irrigation infrastructure. In this photo Lee Robinson (left) and Joseva Waqa from Irritek Moree install outlets and socks on a furrow automation trial established as part of a project in the Border Rivers area in northern NSWsouthern Queensland to demonstrate more water efficient technology. The project is described in our regular column, Irrigation Technology: Agriculture.

ADVERTISING Advertising in this journal is managed by Hallmark Editions on behalf of the Irrigation Australia Limited. Irrigation Australia Limited takes no responsibility for the technical accuracy of article content. All contact with businesses and organisations about advertising are made by Hallmark Editions sales staff, who must identify themselves and the fact that they work for Hallmark Editions on behalf of the IAL. No special consideration will be given to any advertisers as far as editorial content or front cover material is concerned.

Decisions as to editorial content and the front cover are the prerogative of the editor and the National Board of the IAL. Advertising enquiries should be directed to the Sales Director.

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CHAIRMAN’S MESSAGE

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FROM THE EDITOR

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IRRIGATION TECHNOLOGY: AGRICULTURE

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IRRIGATION TECHNOLOGY: URBAN

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IRRIGATION RESEARCH

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TRAINING AND PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT

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IAL NEWS

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THE BIG ISSUE

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CONTRACTOR’S CORNER

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STANDARDS

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SMART APPROVED WATERMARK

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BUSINESS FEATURE

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AROUND INDUSTRY

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ICID INSIGHTS

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NEW PRODUCTS AND FEATURES

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FEATURES SOIL

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SOIL – THE FORGOTTEN PART OF THE IRRIGATION EQUATION

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SALT ON THE MOVE IN IRRIGATED AGRICULTURE

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A TOUGH NEIGHBOURHOOD TO GROW UP IN

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EVAPOTRANSPIRATION STRESS INDEX : A BETTER WAY TO MANAGE IRRIGATION?

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MANAGING SCHEDULING AND SOILS FOR BETTER IRRIGATION

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WESTERN SYDNEY: A LABORATORY FOR UNDERSTANDING PERIURBAN WATER ISSUES

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SATELLITE & SMS WATER MANAGEMENT SYSTEM

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MURRAY DARLING BASIN DRAFT PLAN: OPPORTUNITY OR THREAT?

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FLOWMETERING: WHAT STRAIGHT PIPE REQUIREMENTS?

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IRRIGATION IRRIGATIONAUSTRALIA AUSTRALIA

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CHAIRMAN’S MESSAGE

CHAIRMAN’S MESSAGE What a difference a couple of months makes. As winter ended and spring began, so too did the rain, quickly shifting the focus from dealing with drought to dealing with floods - and in the eastern states bringing flows not seen in the lower reaches of the River Murray for many years. In the euphoria of spring rains, it’s all too easy to forget how much the drought impacted on irrigation across the country.

What was shaping up to be a reasonable sales season came to a grinding halt when the Federal election was called. Even though the election campaign was shorter than normal, delays in finalising the outcome meant that the hiatus period lasted even longer than in 2007. We can only hope that, with the election out of the way, the final quarter of the year will bring some improvement. In many states, urban water restrictions are being eased and this should hopefully bring customers back to the market.

To my surprise, water was off the agenda during the election campaign.

Other than some attention over the delay in releasing the MDBA’s Sustainable Diversion Limits, water barely rated a mention. Maybe the campaign strategists believed that the public was suffering from water overload. Now the election is over, water is back in the media, with the focus firmly on the Murray-Darling Basin Authority’s Draft Guide to the Basin Plan.

The plan’s release attracted considerable comment – sadly much of it ill-informed and factually incorrect.

I hope that as the weeks pass, the debate will become more reasoned.

The plan does include an estimate of the fall in rural production as water is removed from irrigators. However, it also recognises that innovation can reduce the problem. So there is the essential challenge for our industry: to drive increased water productivity through innovation and to do so in the 5-year transitional period allowed for in the plan.

At the June Conference, I picked up a copy of Richard Stirzaker’s book, Out of the Scientist’s Garden. The major take home from this book for me is the insight into why innovations in agriculture are so poorly adopted.

There are many contributing factors: the age profile of our farmers, the

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IRRIGATION AUSTRALIA

uncertainty over water, a lack of power over produce prices. But at the heart of the problem is the management of risk.

It is well understood that a modern, well-designed system can bring extra profits; however, complex systems and the monitoring needed to properly manage them bring additional risk.

Our focus is also often singular, on improving one area in isolation. Yes, farmers can master it, but in doing so must divert time from all of the other activities which must be managed each day. Too much focus on one area intensifies the risk of failure in others.

Irrigators may not make the decision consciously, but use their intuition and gut feel to steer away from the potentially rewarding, but equally risking changes.

Some of the successes that Richard has observed in his many years of research have come, not from the complex, but from the simple: simple tools, simple rules and usually from making incremental changes. Richard points out the need to simplify complex problems, making sure all the time that an appropriate level of detail

and usefulness is maintained. This is an important lesson for us as we try to define the future shape of irrigation RD&E and strive to increase adoption rates - for the plethora of techniques and products already developed as well as those still to come.

I would suggest taking Richard’s model one step further, to look not for radical change, but for a simple process of continual improvement, where we avoid the big, complex, expensive leaps of faith and focus instead on a process of steady and deliberate change. This will mean adopting a more people centred, social approach..

In doing so I am confident that we can help secure the profitably of our irrigated farms and the survival of the rural communities which support them.

So as the rivers flow and the dams fill, let’s take some time to sit and think about what this means for our industry. And remember, it can just as easily stop raining tomorrow.

Peter Toome IAL National Chairman

FROM THE EDITOR

FROM THE EDITOR Here we are again, the last edition of the magazine for the year. Time certainly seems to have flown by, and a contributing factor to that has been the busy year.

Water and irrigation issues have been high on the agenda this year and we have tried to cover the key stories from perspectives that you wouldn’t find in other media. This edition of the journal is no different.

Our editorial feature for this edition is soils and irrigation. Soil is an important part of the efficient irrigation equation.

Unfortunately, this importance sometimes gets forgotten as we concentrate on how much water to apply, as well as when and how. In this edition we look at soils from a variety of angles.

David McKenzie, a soil scientist, sets the foundation to the feature by examining the basics of soil assessment and management for irrigation.

In doing this he reminds us that optimising the physical, chemical and biological fertility of soil is part of a ‘bigger picture’ of management. Also featured are articles by MEA, Adcon and Sentek, all companies whose bread and butter is based on managing soils and irrigation. And the National Program for Sustainable Irrigation outlines research projects that have contributed to improved management of soil salinity.

Of course, the big news lately has been the release of the Guide to the Murray Darling Basin Plan. I’m not sure what our members in WA think about the media coverage and the depth and variety of reaction. Our emphasis is on providing two articles that demonstrate differences in reaction, as well as an article about legal implications (this edition’s “Big Issue”), and one about the opportunities the plan presents to the industry, in “My View”.

The big news for members involved in rural water service provision has been the ICID conference, held in Jogjakarta in October. A delegation from Australia attended the conference, and Willem Vlotman, Australian representative on ICID, has worked hard on the plane on the way back to Australia to provide an overview.

We feature all the usual regular columns and a good selection of articles of general irrigation interest, including straight pipe requirements for flow meters and the challenges that are emerging as urban areas expand into agricultural and horticultural areas, such as in Western Sydney.

I would also like to thank those readers who responded to our reader survey of the journal. We have now completed two reader surveys, one in 2008 and the other this year, and I am happy to be able to report that

both have indicated a high degree of reader satisfaction with the magazine.

Over 80% of readers identify that the magazine is a good source of information on irrigation and that the appearance of the magazine is good or excellent. Most of our readers also see the relevance of articles as excellent or good. Of course, I know we can always make improvements, and if you have any suggestions I would love to hear them.

I hope you enjoy this edition of the journal.

Finally, to all our readers and their families, I’d like to wish you all the very best for this year’s festive season and a wonderful 2011.

Anne Currey Editor-in-Chief

SOMETHING GETTING UP YOUR NOSE? GOT AN OPINION ON AN IRRIGATION ISSUE? Then tell us what you think - write a letter to the editor.

A number of readers have asked for a Letters to the Editor page and here at Irrigation Australia we’d love to hear what you think about an issue in the irrigation industry - any issue.

Send your letters to Anne at email anne@naturallyresourceful.com.au IRRIGATION AUSTRALIA

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IRRIGATION TECHNOLOGY: AGRICULTURE

IRRIGATION TECHNOLOGY: AGRICULTURE INFRASTRUCTURE PROJECT SUPPORTS IRRIGATORS, ENVIRONMENT AND REGIONAL COMMUNITIES Annette McCaffery and Janelle Montgomery, Industry & Investment NSW Water for the Future is an Australian Government initiative that funds water saving projects. One of the projects that it is supporting currently, in partnership with Industry & Investment NSW (I&I NSW) and the Border Rivers Catchment Management Authority, is an on-farm irrigation infrastructure pilot project, NSW Sustaining the Basin: Border Rivers-Gwydir (STBBRG).

STBBRG aims to achieve water savings and improve water use efficiency. Water for the Future is providing up to 80% of the funding in return for 50% of the saved water entitlements. The remaining water savings will stay with the participating irrigators to boost farm productivity.

Opportunity to upgrade and make water savings The project has provided an opportunity for NSW Border Rivers and Gwydir Valley irrigators to upgrade irrigation infrastructure, improve productivity, and adapt to reduced water availability to help ensure their long-term sustainability and that of local communities.

The aim of the pilot project was to measure irrigator responsiveness to government-funded infrastructure modernisation programs aimed at water recovery and, more importantly, help guide the development and implementation of future programs in other NSW MurrayDarling catchments.

Elements of the STBBRG include capacity building, water use efficiency planning, competitive tendering for government funds and field demonstrations of new and emerging water management technologies.

Lee Robinson (left) and Joseva Waqa from Irritek Moree installing outlets and socks on the furrow automation trial established as part of the project's technology demonstrations.

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IRRIGATION AUSTRALIA

The program has been delivered over a 12-month period since late last year. This short timeframe has been a barrier to some irrigators participating and proceeding to the tender stage. During this time irrigators were encouraged and expected to attend training, complete an Irrigation Farm Water Use Efficiency Assessment, develop and submit their tenders and have the infrastructure installed.

The project initially only included one tender round, however, as a result of feedback that the timeframes were too tight for some irrigators to complete an Irrigation Farm Water Use Efficiency Assessment and develop a tender application, I&I NSW opened a second tender round. This allowed new irrigators to submit tenders for funding as well as giving unsuccessful tenderers from Round One the opportunity to access technical assistance from I&I NSW extension staff to revise and resubmit their original tenders.

The deadline to complete Irrigation Farm Water Use Efficiency assessments was also extended until 30 October 2010.

Irrigators get on board Despite the timeframes, fifty-three farm businesses representing 44 irrigators or 55% of the eligible irrigators in the project area registering a formal Expression of Interest (EOI).

Forty-one applicants or 77% of EOI applicants engaged an approved irrigation consultant to undertake an Irrigation Farm Water Use Efficiency Assessment.

Thirty-eight tenders were received and 14 projects were recommended for funding.

These projects included storage cell construction and conveyance work, installing centre pivots and lateral move irrigation systems and designing and installing subsurface drip and control mechanisms. Projects ranged in value from $50,000 to $1.2 million.

A program of priority training delivered in conjunction with technology demonstrations was also offered to irrigators to provide skills and knowledge to support the completion of Irrigation Farm Water Use Efficiency assessments and tender applications. Thirteen workshops were attended by 177 irrigators and consultants, and four field days attended by 79 participants were held from January until August 2010.

Peter Smith, leader of the project and IAL national board director, said the project team were pleased that a number of projects took a whole-farm approach.

‘Some of the projects looked at in-field management improvements and modified field layouts as well as storage works.

‘This will add to the water savings across their whole farm business and increase the already significant benefits achievable by improving the infrastructure,’ Peter said.

This pilot project has shown there is support for infrastructure modernisation programs by irrigators and regional communities.

IRRIGATION TECHNOLOGY: AGRICULTURE

Gavin Bartel, Moree Gavin Bartel is another irrigator dealing with reduced water availability and future viability. With funding from the pilot project Gavin has bought a towable pivot irrigator that will water two 30 ha circles on country that was previously developed for furrow irrigation. When Gavin investigated his options he found that converting to a pivot system will allow him to use his available water more efficiently and achieve water savings of up to 30%.

Peter Smith, Project Leader delivering the Centre Pivot Lateral Move National Training Program to irrigators in the Moree district.

Project saves water

Part of the 1.05 kilometre pipeline being established on Beela.

The Estens Family, Moree

Mark and Peter Winter, Moree

Until recently, the Estens family were mainly cotton growers. However, cutbacks to their bore water entitlement meant cotton production was no longer an economic option for their business and they looked for alternative enterprises for their farm "Beela" to remain viable.

The Estens are currently developing a 160 ha citrus orchard with the assistance of funding through the pilot project. The newly established orchard has a high-tech drip irrigation system to maximise water use efficiency and includes a 1.05 km pipeline to pipe their bore water which will significantly reduce transmission losses on the lighter soils.

Mark and Peter Winter currently farm 5,000 ha and irrigate up to 1300 ha of cotton, wheat and pulse crops each year on two farms.

Peter said they applied for funding through the pilot project because his accounting of water at the beginning and end of the season showed there were significant losses that were worth investigating and recovering.

The funded project being implemented will allow water to be fully shared between their two properties and significantly reduce losses from seepage and evaporation by moving water from a large storage into a smaller storage.

In addition to this, works to minimise seepage will be completed and structures will be installed, including piping to move water around the farm more efficiently.

Heath Estens at the newly established citrus orchard on Beela, Moree.

Mark and Peter Winter with a pipe which will be part of the new system that will allow water to be shared between their two properties.

IRRIGATION AUSTRALIA

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IRRIGATION TECHNOLOGY: URBAN

IRRIGATION TECHNOLOGY: URBAN IMPROVING SOILS, MANAGING WATER: HEALTHY GREENS Lake Karrinyup Country Club is one of Australia’s more idyllic golf course settings. It is just 13 km north of the Perth CBD and boasts absolute tranquillity – a large natural lake, native forest, lush couch fairways and manicured Bent grass greens.

But this beauty belies a course known for its challenging layout and a competition history that includes several Johnnie Walker Classic titles.

This high quality course is the result of a long-term plan that has involved redeveloping 20 of its 29 greens to United States Golf Association specifications. The other nine greens, which form a short course, will be developed in future to the same standard.

Those familiar with golf courses will know that US Golf Association specifications, which specify soil physical properties such as drainage and soil particle size, are the accepted standard for quality golf courses around the world.

Redeveloping the greens at Lake Karrinyup to this standard has had a big payoff, says Course Superintendent, Trevor Strachan.

“The greens are more workable, have improved drought tolerance and they allow for uniform water conductivity through the soil profile,” he explained.

Soil the key to improved water management Trevor says considerable research was undertaken into ways to conserve the course’s water source as well as monitor the movement of water through the soil profile. This was part of long held plans to reduce water use.

“We could see ourselves saving between 10 to 20% of our water licence allocation,” he said.

One of the first steps was to complete soil tests on every green. What they found was that there was a lot of variability with at least ten different soil profiles. The solution was to replace existing soils with imported material – 12,000 cubic metres of it. The result was a standardised medium that allowed for uniform irrigation.

The next step was to choose a soil sensor to monitor water use and water movement. A key requirement was maintaining the water in the root zone and not allowing it move into the gravel layer, which forms a perched watertable. To do this it was important to ensure irrigation water is applied at the correct levels to ensure water does not move past the root zone.

After a lot of research, an Aquaspy system was chosen. There were several reasons for this choice.

“I had used the system in the past so was familiar with it,” explained Trevor. > continued on page 9

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FEATURE: SOILS

SOIL – THE FORGOTTEN PART OF THE IRRIGATION EQUATION

David McKenzie, Soil Science Consultant, Orange NSW While we might concentrate on how much water we apply for effective irrigation, as well as how and when, just as important is the medium the water goes onto – the soil. Optimising the physical, chemical and biological fertility of soil is part of a ‘bigger picture’ of managing the elements profitability, productivity, human health and maintenance or enhancement of ecosystem services. In this article David McKenzie examines the basics of soil assessment and management for irrigation.

Getting the balance right with investment in irrigation can be challenging, especially when we are faced with one or both of the following constraints: • high quality irrigation water is very scarce most of the time and is becoming more expensive to buy and to pump • sometimes irrigation water contains salts with the potential to degrade soil.

Water use efficiency relates, in the first instance, to delivery and storage problems for water before it reaches the crops to be irrigated, e.g. channel leakage, evaporation losses from storages, tail-water losses.

An associated aspect of water use efficiency is in the paddock. Soil water monitoring allows several factors that relate strongly to soil structure to be quantified: water entry, both as a result of irrigation and rainfall; water storage in the root zone (this is influenced strongly by texture, structural form, stoniness and organic matter content of the soil); waterlogging (lack of oxygen)

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constraints caused by surface architecture problems; waterlogging associated with poor internal drainage; and excessive deep drainage below the root zone, which may mobilise salts inadvertently.

Approaches used include capacitance probes, neutron probes, ‘FullStop’ wetting front detectors, tensiometers and/or direct measurement using soil pits.

To minimise waste and irrigate efficiently, monitoring of soil water is essential despite the expense. If you can’t measure you can’t manage.

An audit program for your soil The soil physical factors associated with soil water monitoring are part of one of the three pillars of soil health that are relevant to irrigation (see figure); soil chemical and biological fertility also are very important.

Soil physical factors – structure, water and oxygen Where there are problems with soil water entry, soil water storage, waterlogging or too much deep drainage, a comprehensive and well documented soil amelioration program is required that takes into account the various sources of information about soil physical conditions. This should be done taking into account water, climate and

crop/plant performance data for the area being irrigated.

Sources of data about soil physical properties include: • baseline soil surveys with topsoil and subsoil information at an intensity of more than one sampling site per hectare, before irrigation development; of particular importance are the soil factors, compaction severity and stability in water • predictions of key soil factors, where strong correlations exist, with remote sensing data such as from EM surveys; • soil water content/potential data from instruments at key monitoring locations • comprehensive soil examination to a depth of at least one metre in existing irrigation developments, with sampling site location guided by maps of crop/plant yield and profitability (for agriculture and horticulture).

Soil chemistry – nutrients, pH, salinity and sodicity Getting the required amount of water into a soil and into storage without waterlogging the root zone is a very important objective. However, this is not enough on its own. Irrigation managers also need to ensure that the soil in the root zone has chemical properties that don’t limit plant growth.

The three aspects of soil health: physical factors (soil structure and its interactions with water and oxygen), chemical issues (nutrients, pH, salinity) and biological status (soil organisms), all of which are strongly influenced by soil carbon. These interacting soil factors combine to have a major impact on profitability, productivity, human health and environmental health.

FEATURE: SOILS

Soil chemical issues associated with poor water use include: • pH imbalance – acidity, alkalinity • salinity • boron toxicity • inadequate root growth because of sodicity which results in lack of oxygen when the soil is wet (poor internal drainage) and excessive hardness when it is dry • poor plant uptake of nitrogen from the soil because of losses associated with denitrification under waterlogged conditions • poor accessibility to immobile nutrients such as phosphorus and zinc by plant roots • excessive leaching of valuable nutrients such as sulphur.

To identify the risk of any of these issues, a soil assessment and management program that includes soil chemical factors is essential before irrigation development and redevelopment. Some soil constraints, e.g. subsoil acidity, are very hard to correct after an area has been developed.

Irrigation: it’s not all about water Irrigation isn’t only about water. An important component is soil and soil health. Examples of soil related issues that often are overlooked by irrigation managers are: • Different plant species and varieties have different soil requirements. Often there is a mismatch between plants and soil, leading to poor plant growth and inefficient use of applied water. Deal with this problem by establishing threshold values for key soil factors for the crops and plants being considered, either directly or through a literature review, then compare crop or plant requirements with site soil properties. Either select a species that has natural adaptation to the prevailing soil conditions, or correct the soil problems through a cost-effective soil amelioration program.

• Subsections of a site often have major differences in their ability to store water. Some problems can be overcome, e.g. disrupting a compacted layer to create friable soil can double water holding capacity. Other factors such as stone content and depth to bedrock are less easily modified, so mapping of plant available water across a site is recommended so the boundaries of contrasting irrigation management units can be defined. This is crucial information for irrigation system designers and installers. It helps to decide which irrigation system should be selected to make the most of soil conditions at each new site under consideration.

• Most irrigation water contains dissolved salts. Even when salt concentrations are relatively low, salt builds up in the root zone under low rainfall conditions where there is not enough water to provide an adequate leaching fraction. Where drip systems are used, complex salt distribution patterns can develop in the root zone. Failing to accurately assess and respond to these trends can lead to serious declines in yield and quality.

Biological status of the soil While it can be difficult to assess soil biological properties, an important first step is to provide soil organisms with the following: • suitable habitat, provided by good soil structure

• an adequate supply of food, i.e. plentiful soil organic matter • a consistent supply of water, along with adequate soil aeration • freedom from toxins.

< continued from page 6

“One of the big things was that it is Windows-based and allows me to graph results over a range of time periods, for example, a day, a week or a month. From this information I can see trends, which allows me to manage water application better.

“And the system measures temperatures and salt,” he said.

In 2007 LKCC applied for and won a water grant from the Commonwealth and received approval to proceed. Part of this grant included a day’s training for staff, which Trevor said was enough to skill people up in its operation.

Bruce Scarterfield at Total Eden McCracken Water Systems oversaw the installation of the AquaSpy system in August 2008 after winning the tender to supply the technology.

“The course has state-of-the-art irrigation and we needed to match that with technology that was sophisticated without being difficult to install or operate,” Bruce said. “It took just three days to put the system in without any disruption.”

The system works While they are still fine tuning the system, the team at LKCC irrigate the green surfaces less and Trevor estimates that they are making the 10 to 20% savings that they had envisaged for these areas when they embarked on the redevelopment.

However, this is not the case for other areas, which still have their natural soils.

One thing Trevor has noted is that the quality of the water from the five bores that supply the course is decreasing as a result of increased salinity and falling aquifer levels. The solution has been to increase the ratio of gypsum and calcium that is being applied and to regularly flush areas where salt is accumulating.

The monitoring capabilities of the system are being used to help manage the salinity as it is being used to check where water is sitting in the soil profile and schedule irrigations.

So, two years since the system was installed, how is it performing? According to Trevor, who has no doubts, it is “definitely living up to expectations.”

Note. This article was written by Aquaspy and Anne Currey.

Even in a biologically depleted soil, desirable organisms tend to be present although in very small numbers. While they can proliferate quickly when suitable environmental conditions are provided, it may be possible to speed up the colonisation process by applying biological compounds such as compost teas. A diversity of organisms tends to minimise the risk of a single harmful pathogen from becoming dominant in the soil biosphere.

Of particular interest are free-living nitrogen-fixing bacteria. They are likely to become more important for providing soil nitrogen when crude oil and natural gas become less available and much more expensive.

Fungi, which attach to plant roots and improve their ability to scavenge for nutrients, also should be encouraged.

Professional advice for a professional industry Irrigation isn’t an amateur activity.

More and more professionals are used to design, install and operate irrigation systems. This is one reason the IAL has developed its certified irrigation program. Just as the industry is using irrigation professionals to design, build and operate irrigation systems, it makes sense to use a professional with soil expertise, such as an accredited soil scientist, to provide advice about the soil part of the irrigation equation.

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FEATURE: SOILS

SALT ON THE MOVE IN IRRIGATED AGRICULTURE Dr Andrew Skinner, Engineering Director, MEA, Adelaide As the Victorian flood waters make their way down the Murray River irrigators could be forgiven for thinking that salt and salinity are yesterday’s nightmare.

Yet exactly the opposite is true; for the past decade salt that has accumulated and been stored in the dry floodplains away from the main river channel is once again on the move. The pristine snow melt from the upper reaches of the Murray that has kept the river flowing during the drought has also kept water salinity levels low.

The problem with salt Soil salinity and irrigation have been intimately linked ever since people began growing crops in one place year after year.

The 1.06 million square-kilometre Murray-Darling Basin (see figure) contains 71% of Australia’s irrigated crops and pastures, accounting for 41% of the nation's gross value of agricultural production (Australian Bureau of Statistics 1992).

Rising salinity levels at the western outflow end of the catchment are a serious cause for concern. Hundreds of tonnes of salt per day have historically entered the bottom reaches of the Murray River in SA alone.

Government-funded salt interception schemes alongside the river have lifted this saline groundwater from bore holes and pumped it into clay-lined evaporation pans away from the river, thus keeping river salinity low by shifting salt elsewhere in the landscape.

Stockyard Plains near Waikerie in the SA Riverland is the site of one such evaporation pond.

Tree clearing for agriculture has resulted in widespread dryland salinity, but irrigation areas alongside the river have traditionally also exacerbated salinity problems in the river. Growing plants increased soil salinity by extracting fresh water from brackish water during transpiration, leaving salts behind to accumulate in the soil.

The use of already saline irrigation water on perennial crops necessitates adding a ‘leaching fraction’ to the amount of irrigation water applied; this extra water is designed to flush toxic salts out below the crop root zone.

Such root zone leaching has the unintended consequence of putting pressure on local aquifers, leading to mobilisation of groundwater towards the river at the lowest point of the landscape. This adds further salt to the river water, which is in turn recycled further downstream onto other crops and into other aquifers.

Monitoring the buildup of salt in soils under irrigated agriculture has, however, been far more complicated than measuring salt in the irrigation water itself.

How much salt?

The Murray-Darling Basin in southeastern Australia covers 14% of the county’s total land area and is home to 11% of the Australian population. The Darling (2740 km), Murray (2530 km) and Murrumbidgee (1690 km) are Australia's three longest rivers.

Source: Discover Murray, www. murrayriver.com.au

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For the past three years MEA, which is an environmental measurement company, along with SARDI and the CSIRO, has been evaluating soil salinity sensors from different manufacturers in the Yalumba Oxford Landing vineyard near Waikerie in SA. MEA has also built buoys for the Australian Water Quality Centre to continuously monitor water quality in the River Murray. Located at Morgan and Tailem Bend in the main river channel, these buoys provide water salinity data from two depths in the river and trace salt’s journey along our main irrigation artery.

Five different instruments were compared under standard irrigation applications on Cab-Sav vines on

Ramsey rootstocks, and all sensors presented a similar picture of salt accumulating and moving within the crop root zone.

As the irrigation season progressed, soil pore water salinity at a depth of 400 mm increased to 5 mS/cm, or about seven times the concentration of salinity in the river water (0.7 mS/cm) applied to irrigate the crop.

Deeper in the root zone, at a depth of 900 mm, soil salinity rose to extreme levels (15 mS/cm) when referenced against the CSIRO ‘soil saturation extract salinity scale’ used to understand the effects of salt on the crop.

While three significant rainfall events in October and November 2009 diluted soil water at 400 mm depth in the root zone, soil salinity problems bounced back within days.

Instrumentation used in the soil salinity trials was manufactured in Germany, the UK and Australia.

Of these, the simplest device was also the most cost-effective. The ‘Full Stop’ is a funnel-shaped device invented by the CSIRO in Australia. Two units are buried at 200 mm and 400 mm depths in the crop root zone.

When salt stored in the root profile is mobilised downwards by irrigation or rainfall events, the Full Stop captures a small water sample under repeatable conditions. This thimble-full of water can be extracted shortly after the event by lifting it the surface through a connecting tube, using a plastic syringe provided with each pair of Full Stops.

The Full Stop automatically empties itself by allowing trapped water at the bottom of the funnel to wick back into the surrounding soil, making way for the next irrigation event.

Managing salt Excessive levels of salt in the soil can lead to yield loss and decreased crop quality.

Therefore soil salinity levels have to be actively managed - ironically - by some small over-irrigation of the crop, which is designed to move accumulated salt and to park it below the root zone.

CSIRO’s Dr Richard Stirzaker, inventor of the Full Stop device and soil solute group program leader with the former CRC for Irrigation Futures, has described salt in irrigated agriculture as a mixed blessing. While the effect of salt on irrigated crops is deleterious at best,

FEATURE: SOILS

salt does serve as a medium-term signature of the quality of your irrigation management.

Note 1. Readers can contact MEA for more information about the trial, sonja@ mea.com.au.

Note 2. MEA is a distributor of the Full Stop.

More information For more information about rising salinity levels referred to in the article go to Jolly, I.D., Dowling, T.I., Zhang, L. Williamson, D.R. and Walker, G.R. ‘Water and salt balances of the catchments of the MurrayDarling Basin’. CSIRO Technical Report 37/97, November 1997

AUSTRALIAN SOILS VULNERABLE TO CLIMATE CHANGE Australia’s mostly infertile and fragile soils make the nation’s agriculture industry particularly vulnerable to climate change.

At an international soils conference held in Brisbane in August, Director of the CSIRO Climate Adaptation Flagship, Dr Andrew Ash, said major changes are required in land management to stop the 60% of land in Australia that is currently used for agriculture from shrinking.

“Overall, agricultural productivity in Australia will be negatively impacted by climate change through temperature increases and declining water availability, particularly in irrigation areas in southern Australia,” he said.

According to Andrew, developing appropriate adaptation responses can greatly reduce the negative impacts of climate change but there will be limits to adaptation that we don’t yet fully understand. Adaptation responses will range from incremental changes in management and adoption of new technologies to cope with some of the change to more transformational changes to agricultural systems and land use.

FROM RESEARCH TO PRACTICAL TOOL While much research produces results that are relevant to end users, the next step of developing these results into tools and techniques that are practical and useable has proven to be a challenge.

One recent research project, the Root Zone Water, Salinity and Nutrient Management Under Precision Irrigation Project, by Dr Tapas Biswas and Dr Gerrit Schrale, formerly of SARDI, has managed to meet this challenge with the result that one of its tools now has more 200 irrigators trained in using it in SA. The project outputs are described in this article.

The focus of the project was to change awareness of what good water and salt management involves. Its aim was to have local irrigators and the community better understand the need to actively monitor and manage root zone salinity and so avoid a buildup of salinity in the rootzone at times of limited water availability.

As a result, a soil water salinity monitoring tool, called the SoluSAMPLER™, was developed. With the SoluSAMPLER irrigators can easily monitor and manage salinity through most of the growing season. Previously they used soil testing to identify salinity, but had little or no basis to use that information to manage root zone salinity.

This new technique of irrigated crop salinity management may become most useful to the lower Murray Basin growers in the approaching season when river water salinity can be expected to spike drastically caused by the mobilisation of large amount of salt accumulated in the geological strata next to the river during the drought.

SoluSAMPLER is also an excellent tool for monitoring the movement of nitrogen through the soil profile. Soil water samples collected periodically after a fertiliser event can be analysed to help keeping fertiliser within the root zone.

Project’s practical outcomes There are now about 200 trained growers from Sunraysia, Riverland, Lower Lakes and southeast of SA who are aware of the salinity threats and its active management in irrigated horticulture.

Key cooperating growers involved in the project are now actively monitoring and managing salinity on commercial plantings on their properties, leading to increased production and economic returns. Salinity management workshops for irrigators were implemented by the SA Murray Darling Basin NRM Board, as part of a larger ongoing training program for better irrigation management, seeking incorporation of initial awareness of on-farm salinity management being firmly incorporated into future irrigation management. This is expected to lead to district-wide economic and environmental benefits of reduced root zone salinity as more irrigators attend NRM Board training.

The project has resulted in new thinking by water regulators that will help irrigators implement better on-farm salinity management. For example, the SAMDB NRM Board is considering the use of carryover water allocations for winter leaching to reduce salinity levels below individual crop target thresholds.

By better understanding root zone salinity buildup the Board now realises that a blanket level of water use efficiency across its region may no longer be appropriate, and this will be reflected in future water regulations.

About 2,000 SoluSAMPLER units have been in use nationally, and are now being commercially promoted in thirty-three countries.

For SoluSAMPLER information contact Sentek on free call 1800 736 835, or visit www.sentek.com.au.

The SoluSAMPLER is being used

by Finniss River grapegrower, Tony Brook (right), to manage vineyard’s salinity. With Tony are Dr Tapas Biswas (left) and Michael Cutting (centre) of the South Australian Murray Darling Basin NRM Board.

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FEATURE: SOILS

A TOUGH NEIGHBOURHOOD TO GROW UP IN ROOT ZONE CONDITIONS IN AUSTRALIAN VINEYARDS Robert Murray, Visiting Research Fellow, School of Agriculture, Food and Wine, The University of Adelaide A recently completed project has found that conditions in the root zone of vineyards are universally poor in finer-textured subsoils at depths of only 20 to 50 cm. It examined 22 distinct subsoils in 18 drip-irrigated vineyards across 4 grape-growing regions (Barossa Valley, Currency Creek, Sunraysia, Murrumbidgee Irrigation Area).

The project focused on subsoil structure and measured infiltration rates (drainage) and resistance to root penetration in the field and resistance to root penetration and air-filled porosity (aeration) in the laboratory under controlled conditions at both field capacity ( 10kPa) and nearer the refill point ( 50 kPa). The density of root growth in the subsoil was also measured at different depths in nine of the vineyards.

Infiltration rates were generally poor with 33% below 1 mm/hr and 75% below 10 mm/hr. All the subsoils examined had very poor aeration and high resistance to root penetration.

The subsoil conditions are summarised in Figure 2. Only 6% (shaded section) of the samples examined had enough aeration (>0.1) and penetration resistance low enough (<2 MPa) to permit root growth and function. Resistances to root penetration measured in the field after irrigation were even higher (60% were >2 MPa).

Good correlations between airfilled porosity and root length density suggested that poor aeration or lack of oxygen in the root zone is the main problem. Poor aeration stifles root activity (including water uptake) and creates nutrient imbalances and toxicities. Poor infiltration and high irrigation rates prolong this state of affairs because the soil drains slowly or stays wet longer. As it drains, oxygen availability improves but penetration resistance increases and suppresses root growth.

Such poor conditions have serious implications for vine performance and water use efficiency and suggest that root activity is concentrated in the topsoil, with its fluctuating water availability, and denied refuge in the moist but hostile subsoil beneath.

Root activity in a more “root-friendly”

saturated soil water content

dry refill point penetration resistance limit

Non-limiting water content range

wet full point aeration limit

soil structure decline

saturated dry

soil water content

wet Nonlimiting water content range

refill point

penetration resistance limit

full point

aeration limit Adapted from Letey

Figure 1. Soil structure Soil structure is the size and arrangement of the spaces or pores in soil; these are filled with water, air or living organisms.

The larger pores (>0.03 mm) are essential for roots to grow and function properly because they promote drainage, aeration and low resistance to penetration.

When soil structure declines (see opposite), the larger pores are lost and there is now a narrower range or “window” of soil water contents that allows roots to grow and function.

Outside this range, at higher water contents, there is little oxygen available to roots; at lower water contents, the roots can’t extend because the soil is too strong. In many subsoils the width of this window is zero so that conditions are “hostile” towards roots at any water content

subsoil would reduce the dependence on frequent irrigation. This research shows that subsoil structure in vineyards needs renovation and maintenance while preparation for new plantings needs much more care.

Under dense stands of native vegetation where the subsoil structure and the plant community have evolved together over a long time, the growth of new roots, the decay of old roots and the associated activities of soil organisms act together to create and maintain larger pores for drainage and aeration.

When this is replaced with fewer, shallow-rooted plants and less biological activity, these larger pores are gradually lost; it appears that the roots of irrigated vines alone are not enough to stop this loss. This structure decline is dramatically accelerated by the stresses of tillage, which destroys large pores and their continuity and hastens the loss of organic carbon; by traffic compaction, which crushes the larger pores; by excessive irrigation, which weakens soil structure and makes it more vulnerable to collapse; and by irrigation with saline water, which makes the soil structure even less stable towards the other stresses.

In existing vineyards renovating subsoil structure under the vine row is difficult and can only be achieved gradually using plant roots to create larger pores at depth. Vine roots alone are not enough to do this and using winter cover crops in the vine row should be considered and trialled as a long-term strategy. In the meantime, strategies to increase the volume of well-structured soil available to vine roots include mounding of the vine row and deep tillage of new plantings.

Mounding of the vine row is achieved by moving topsoil from the inter-row area where it is of less use.

This has been done in established vineyards and appears to cause no problems unless vine butts are wounded in the process or grafts become buried. There are, however, some obstacles to mounding. In an ergonomic sense, mounds make hand pruning and picking more difficult. > continued on page 14

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IRRIGATION AUSTRALIA

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FEATURE: SOILS

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Figure 2. Subsoil conditions showing only 6% (shaded section) of the samples examined had enough aeration (>0.1) and penetration resistance low enough (<2 MPa) to permit root growth and function.

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Their design must take account of the total wheel track of machinery and of the slope and shape of the mound shoulders so that runoff and erosion don’t occur; this may require winter stabilisation of the soil surface with a shallow, fibrous-rooted cover crop such as ryegrass.

As mounding also increases the surface area of the soil a little, there is the potential for slightly greater evaporative water losses and temperature excursions in the root zone.

This means that applying a surface mulch during the growing season should be considered. Even in the absence of mounding, surface mulch improves the root environment and encourages soil biological activity but needs to be monitored for pests. Vine roots can also be encouraged to explore the inter-row area if the compaction caused by heavy inter-row traffic is removed.

For new plantings, careful deep tillage at the right soil water content and “priming” of the subsoil with a large root population offers a better and longer start in life for vines.

These improvements in the size and condition of the root zone will cushion vines against adversity and improve water use efficiency.

Note. This study, which has just been completed, was jointly funded by the National Program for Sustainable Irrigation and the Grape and Wine Research and Development Corporation.

More detailed guidelines will soon be placed on the NPSI website (http://www.npsi.gov.au/).

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IRRIGATION AUSTRALIA

FEATURE: SOILS

IRRIGATION RESEARCH EVAPOTRANSPIRATION STRESS INDEX : A BETTER WAY TO MANAGE IRRIGATION? M. Dalton, P. Andrews, S.Green and P. Buss, Sentek, Adlaide and B. Barrett, University of Adelaide

to retrospectively ascertain whether irrigation management could have been enhanced during this period.

There are big benefits in being able to detect plant water stress early in a commercially irrigated crop, particularly in achieving optimum crop yield and health with limited water resources. A lot of progress has been made in this area through the use of near-continuous measurements of soil moisture to determine the early onset of crop water stress. Sentek Technologies’ methodology for determining the onset of plant water stress has been to identify points in a summed graph where a slow-down in water use occurs, a technique now widely used in the irrigation industry.

Conducting the trial

Using this methodology, stress points can be obvious, but at times they are masked by other processes occurring in management or the environment.

Factors such as pruning, disease pressures, applying oil sprays and high velocity winds can all affect plant water use. For these reasons, a refined methodology is now proposed, using the calculation of the Evapotranspiration Stress Index (ETSI), which allows for the discrimination of evapotranspiration alone from those other management influences.

A study to evaluate the effectiveness of this approach in young olive trees was performed at the Roseworthy Campus site of the National Olive Variety Assessment (NOVA) project, which is a national screening project for about 100 known olive varieties. The project involves the Australian Olive Association (AOA), the Rural Industries Research and Development Council (RIRDC), Primary Industries South Australia (PIRSA), the University of Adelaide and several private companies, including Sentek.

Trees were planted in 1998 and established under drip irrigation and close cultural management. Sentek capacitance probes were installed in the year 2000 and remained in place for four years while the plants became established. In the first growing season of this monitoring phase, significant stress periods were observed, allowing the opportunity to optimise management strategies for subsequent years. The newly developed ETSI index was used

EnviroSCAN™ probes were installed next to four trees in the orchard. The probes were placed near a representative tree of either Frantoio or Barnea olive varieties in each of Blocks I and III. This arrangement was decided on after a detailed soil pit survey.

Soils consisted of a blocky red-brown light to medium clay to a depth of 40 cm, overlaying a clay loam to an average depth of 95 cm, which in turn overlaid a deep carbonate layer.

To gather information needed to test the effectiveness of ETSI, probes were installed next to four olive trees in the trial site.

The probes comprised a series of electronic capacitance sensors placed at 10, 30, 50, 70 and 100 cm below the ground surface. Sensors were held in place on a plastic probe rod and linked using electronic circuitry. Probes were housed inside a PVC access tube installed vertically into the ground to a depth of 1.5 m. Measurements were obtained from each sensor depth every 10 minutes and recorded using a Sentek RT6 datalogger.

EnviroSCAN probes are loaded with a default calibration equation to provide an output of volumetric water content. This

default calibration equation is accurate enough to enable trends in the soil water dynamics to be visualised, however, it does not provide a true value of soil water content across all soil types. To obtain a more accurate representation of the absolute soil water content, a site specific soil calibration was conducted.

Separate site-specific calibration equations were determined for the A and B soil horizons and loaded into the individual sensors of the probe.

Results Daily water use. Readings from each of the soil water sensors on the probes were recorded and displayed using Sentek’s IrriMAX™ software. The volumetric water content (VWC) values were summed over the entire 1 m soil profile, with an interpolation of VWC being applied for those 10 cm depth increments not containing sensors (Figure 1).

Individual decrements in the VWC (daily total negative change) every 10-minute time interval were summed on a daily basis from 7 am to 7 am the following day. Consideration of a full 24hour period includes the small amount of water transpired at night by plants.

The change in VWC is captured as daily total negative change and also includes a small component of drainage.

Evaptranspiration Stress Index (ETSI) calculation. The calculation of ETSI is based on the recorded evapotranspiration from a nearby Bureau of Meteorology Weather Station (ETo FAO56) and the observed daily water use from the sensors: ETSI = Evapotranspiration/Daily Water Use This concept was first proposed

by P. Symes, G. Connellan, P. Buss and M. Dalton in 2008 as a way of understanding and providing an early warning of soil water stress in mixedplanted bed gardens.

ETSI data collected during this study is presented in Figure 2. It shows initially that irrigations applied were sufficient to meet the high evapotranspiration demands. After a failure of the irrigation equipment, the plants were exposed to a prolonged period of stress as indicated by a slow-down in the soil water use. This slow-down was emphasised by the ETSI calculation. > continued on page 15

IRRIGATION AUSTRALIA

15

FEATURE: SOILS < continued from page 14

Figure 1. A 12-month reading from a soil probe in the trial block.

monitoring for optimization of olive irrigation and fertigation at the NOVA project, Abstract, National Olive Industry Convention, Adelaide, South Australia, 9-13 October.

Mingo, D.M., Bacon, M.A. and Davies, W.J. 2003. Non-hydraulic regulation of fruit growth in tomato plants (Lycopersicon esculentum cv. Solairo) growing in drying soil. J. Exp. Bot. 54:385:1205-1212.

Munns, R., Passioura, J.B., Guo, J., Chazen, O. and Cramer, G.R. 2000.

Water relations and leaf expansion: importance of time scale. J. Exp. Bot. 51:350:1495-1504.

Symes, P., Connellan, G., Buss, P. and Dalton, M. 2008 Irrigation Australia Limited National Conference Proceedings, Melbourne, Australia, 20-22 May. Villalobos, F.J., Orgaz, F., Testi, L. and Fereres, E. 2000. Measurement and modelling of evapotranspiration of olive (Olea europaea L.) orchards. Eur. J. Agron. 13:155-163.

HOW MUCH IN THAT STORAGE? Figure 2. Evapotranspiration Stress Index data showing that while irrigations initially met evapotranspiration demands, a failure of equipment left plants exposed to long periods of water stress, shown by a slowing in soil water use.

An extraordinary irrigation event 1 March triggered a reduction in water stress.

This was followed by a period of recovery.

What the ETSI data clearly accentuates is periods of high ETo (where corresponding large daily reductions in soil water content are expected), and a low daily water use, indicating plant water stress.

By considering the point of inflection on the summed graph where the rate of daily water use began to slow down as the plant entered stress and the ETSI column graph, it was possible to set an ETSI threshold above which significant plant stress was indicated.

This became an important tool in subsequent irrigation management of the trees.

Conclusions The Evapotranspiration Stress Index (ETSI) has shown itself to be a valuable indicator of the need to irrigate. More work needs to be done to test the applicability and possible variability of ETSI thresholds throughout the growing season and in a different crops. It would be interesting to investigate any possible links between water stresses experienced during flowering and the olive’s biennial bearing habits.

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IRRIGATION AUSTRALIA

Note. This article has been adapted from Acta Horticulturae (in press) IHC Symposium, Lisbon, Portugal 22-26 August 2010 Acknowledgments. The assistance of Susan Sweeney, Horticultural Consultant, PIRSA, Peter Cox, Grove Manager, Grove Technologies and Chris Penfold, University of Adelaide is gratefully acknowledged.

Additional assistance, both practical and financial was provided by the Australian Olive Association (AOA), the Rural Industries Research and Development Council (RIRDC), Primary Industries South Australia (PIRSA), the University of Adelaide, BHP Steel, NETAFIM and AgriExchange Services Limited.

Note. EnviroSCAN, IrriMAX and Sentek are trademarks of Sentek Pty Ltd that may be registered in one or more jurisdictions.

More information These papers and articles are useful if you want to find out more about the trial and ETSI. Dalton, M.R., Buss, P., Barrett, B., Cox, P., Sluggett, T. and Sweeney, S. 2002.

EnviroSCAN continuous soil moisture

If you are interested in the state of Australia’s water storages, then two online resources could be just for you.

The national Water Storage information product, funded by the National Water Commission under its $10 million Australian Water Resources Information System project and developed by the Bureau of Meteorology, presents the first national view of the state of Australia's water storages. This provides free online access to water storage levels for more than 250 sites across Australia. This represents over 90% of the capacity of publicly owned water storages in Australia. Up to 200 more storages will be added to the system over the next year.

The information available here shows aggregated information at capital city, state, drainage division and national scales. According to the site, water storages across Australia in mid October were 65.2% full. For Perth this was 28.8%; Sydney, 58.2%; and Adelaide 91.3%. Go to the NWC website to access this pinforaiton www. nwc.gov.au Individual storage levels and information on extra cities and irrigation systems are available on the Bureau of Meteorology website http:// water.bom.gov.au/waterstorage/awris/ index.html

FEATURE: SOILS

MANAGING SCHEDULING AND SOILS FOR BETTER IRRIGATION Peter Toome, Adcon Telemetry Australia, Adelaide In a sign of the times, irrigators are investing large sums of money on improving how they deliver and apply water to their crops. But without properly managing when and how much water is applied, and on what soil types, that investment can be wasted. In this article Peter Toome looks at the importance of not only having a knowledge of scheduling but also soil characteristics, and how to manage both for more effective irrigation.

Basic irrigation scheduling The aim in irrigation scheduling is to match irrigation to the plant requirements. This comes down to a few basic questions: • when in the season to start irrigation • when in the season to finish irrigation • when to trigger an irrigation event • how much water to apply.

These questions deal with the water application aspect of irrigation scheduling, but also important is a knowledge of soils, as different soils will require different approaches.

How much water to apply Irrigation designs often quote the application rate (AR) for each block in millimetres per hour (mm/hr) or litres per hour (L/hr), which are the same if you assume a 1 x 1 m area. Use caution when using quoted figures as many irrigation designers still quote an effective precipitation rate, taking the emitter output (Re), dividing it by the emitter spacing (De) and then row spacing (Dr): AR = (Re/De)/Dr. While this is can be used to compare sprinkler and drip systems, it should not be used in scheduling. For instance, a drip system with 2 L/hr emitters spaced at 0.5 m delivers 4 L per linear metre. If this were applied on 3 m rows, the equivalent full coverage rate would be 1.33 L/hr, but this neglects the fact that the water is being applied along a narrow strip. Assuming the designer has chosen the emitters to suit the soil type, if the water spreads half a metre between emitters, it will likely spread the same amount either side. This means the real application rate – that seen by the soil – is 8 L/hr. If you applied a 6-hour irrigation thinking the system was delivering 1.33 L/hr, the result would be massive runoff with very little water infiltrating the soil.

The only way to truly determine an application rate is to measure it yourself. First, use catch cans or calibrated beakers to measure what is coming out from each emitter. Then, after running the system, dig and determine how wide the wetted strip is. With this information, recalculate the effective application rate. This can also be a pointer to the need for system maintenance.

Figure 1. Soil particles vary in size with the ratios between small, medium and large particles determining soil classification.

To irrigate well, you must know your soils and what can be done to improve water holding capacity and infiltration rates, e.g. balancing pH, increasing organic matter and flushing accumulated salts.

Soils are made up of particles of various sizes. The ratios between the small, medium and large particles determine whether the soil is classified as clay, loam, sand or some subclassification of each. The distribution of particle sizes in turn affects the soil’s water holding capacity and how easily plants can access the stored water.

When a soil is wetted, the water coats the soil particles and occupies the pore spaces between them. Water is easily removed from between the particles but harder to remove from around them. The way the soil water behaves can be explained by considering the three separate forces acting on it: • Soil bond: the strength of the force the soil particle exerts on the water to hold it in place. The smaller the particle, the tighter the bond.

• Gravity: when the soil reaches saturation, the forces

Know your soils Australia’s very old soils and years of intensive farming have resulted in them being robbed of organic material, microorganisms and nutrients. On top of this, irrigation with saline water has turned many soils sodic, making once healthy loams behave like poor sand.

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IRRIGATION AUSTRALIA

Figure 2. Soil forces

FEATURE: SOILS

holding the water to the soil are lower than the pull exerted by gravity, so the water drains through the soil profile.

• Matric potential: a measure of the suction force exerted by the roots of the plant to draw moisture away from the soil.

The physiology of each plant determines the amount of force it can apply before it suffers water stress. Soft stemmed, annual plants are not be able to exert the forces that large, hard stemmed permanent crops will.

correlated with values from capacitance probes, the tension figures can then be inferred with reasonable certainty from a set of generic soil water release curves. This technique too can be improved by measuring soil tension with a portable electronic tension sensor. By taking measurements at several points during the drying cycle, a good estimate of the release curve can be made. Without such measurements, probe users must wait until they have collected enough data to infer these points based on inflections in the data.

Full and refill points

Irrigation rate part of the equation

For each soil type a unique relationship exists between the two measures for soil moisture: • matric potential (the tension in kPa the plant must apply to extract water from the soil) • water content (the % volume of water in a given quantity of soil).

When graphed, this relationship is called the “soil water release curve”.

The rate at which irrigation is applied is also important.

Different soils have different infiltration characteristics.

Water passes rapidly through light textured soils and slowly through heavy soils. Water applied faster than the infiltration rate will pool on the surface. If the site is sloped, water will run off leaving some areas dry and others waterlogged. Soil surveyors typically match soils against a number of standard classifications and from that infer the infiltration rate. A good estimate can be made by welling up an area of dry soil with the rim of a plastic bucket, then applying a couple of litres of water. An hour later, dig a hole and measure the depth and width of the wetted area.

The faster the water moves vertically, the less the lateral spread. In very sandy soils, water can move as much as 60 cm/hr whereas in heavy clay soils, the infiltration rate can be as low as 1 cm/hr. The spacing between emitters with drip systems must be chosen to suit the rate of vertical and lateral spread. Emitters can be spaced further apart in soils with low infiltration rates (and higher lateral spread). Emitter output rates should be decreased in soils with high infiltration rates.

Figure 3. A soil water release curve.

The soil is saturated at tensions below -8 kPa (field capacity), and any extra water applied will drain through the profile.

Plants can easily access water from here to the onset of stress, which may occur at -20 kPa in annual crops or -60 kPa for most permanent crops. Beyond this point plants suffer more water stress and eventually die.

Irrigators are normally interested in what can be held between field capacity and the onset of stress, defined as the readily available water (RAW). Water obtained once the plant is in stress is defined as the deficit available water (DAW).

Together they become total available water (TAW). These figures are expressed in mm so they can be related to irrigation and rainfall.

Although soils with a higher clay content generally hold more water, much of it is too tightly bound to the soil particles to be available to the plant. In general, loam soils make the best growing soils as they have the highest ratio of available water. In light soils, irrigation events must be relatively short and must be applied often. In heavier soils, irrigation can be applied for longer and the interval between irrigation events extended.

Generic soil water release curves are available for a number of common soil types. The difficulty in using these has been that the most common volumetric sensors (capacitance probes) could not accurately measure moisture content; they could provide high repeatability, but users had little certainty over the absolute value, ruling out using a soil water release curve to identify the key tension figures.

The less commonly used point sensors (Theta Probe, HydraProbe) can return accurate, real (absolute rather than relative) soil moisture readings but are too expensive and too hard to install when readings are required through the profile.

If spot readings are taken using one of these point sensors and

When to schedule irrigations Soil moisture sensors and the data they produce can be used to identify key points, e.g. full point refill point and onset of drainage. This is done most easily with matric potential sensors, where the values can be set in absolute numbers.

When working with volumetric sensors, the values must be interpreted based on characteristics of the soil moisture plot, particularly those obtained by looking at sensors placed through the soil profile. This means looking at both the individual soil moisture sensors and the sum or average moisture level across the whole profile.

At the start of the season, irrigation should be held off until moisture levels get close to the refill point. If the soil profile is not full, you can apply an irrigation to top it up. Then, each time moisture levels reach the refill point, irrigation should be applied. If hot weather is forecast, an option is to bring forward the irrigation and apply less water.

Knowing how much to apply to refill the profile requires knowledge of the soil profile. A soil calibration gives the luxury of knowing how many millimetres of water are held between the full and refill points. If you do not have this information, experiment by applying several hours irrigation and watching the increase in stored water in the soil. This will give the system’s effective application rate so you can work out how many hours to run it for.

At the end of the season, many people apply fertigation to trigger a late growth in root mass to set plants up for the coming season. Other growers think of applying leeching irrigation to push accumulated salt through the profile. The wisdom of this is now being questioned, as results from tests on the effectiveness of leeching, show that the best time to do so is when the profile is close to full, which in winter rainfall areas is usually late winter. So after harvest, systems should be serviced and shut down ready for the winter break, ready to kick in again for a late winter or early spring flush.

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TRAINING

TRAINING AND PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT DRAFT CODE OF CONDUCT – HAVE YOUR SAY IAL’s Certification Board was established earlier this year to provide governance of and a quality assurance process for the IAL’s Certified Irrigation Professionals program. Members of the Certification Board are well respected IAL members appointed for two years and were selected following an expression of interest process in 2010.

They are: Ben Chapman (Chair), Colin Campbell, Milan Nedomacki, Gennaro Vellotti and Denis Sparrow.

One of the first activities of the IAL’s Certification Board has been to put together a draft Code of Conduct. The Code of Conduct sets out the levels of integrity, honesty and performance that will be required to maintain the good name and integrity of IAL Certification in the marketplace.

The intention of the Code of Conduct is to simply and clearly spell out and set benchmarks for the expected performance and behaviour of Certified Irrigation Professionals. The intention is not for IAL or the Certification Board

to play “big brother”, rather it is to establish processes that enable IAL to legitimately promote the certification program, and certification holders, as competent operators that uphold a Code of Conduct. Ultimately this will enable IAL to keep cowboys out of its certification program and maintain its value and integrity for all certification holders.

The draft Code of Conduct is currently open for consultation.

Have your say on the code by sending your written comments to tim.gilbert@irrigation.org.au by 30 November 2010.

The Certification Board is genuinely seeking your feedback on this draft Code of Conduct to ensure that it is workable and practical. So, where you have any problem with the draft Code of Conduct please ensure your comments explain the technical or practical reasons for the problem, and consider and present a proposed solution to the problem.

Once finalised and approved by IAL’s Certification Board, all certified irrigation professionals will be expected to sign the Code of Conduct.

DRAFT RECOMMENDED CORE COMPETENCIES FOR AUSTRALIAN SOIL SURVEYORS The Australian Society of Soil Science Inc (ASSSI) recently produced through its Accreditation Board for Certified Professional Soil Scientist (CPSS) the document Australian Soil Surveyors – core competencies (draft for consideration).

The CPSS accreditation program aims to uphold the highest standards in the practice of soil science and is therefore in the process of developing a competency-based assessment across all areas of expertise.

The CPSS Board would value your feedback on the document in the following contexts: • Are the core competencies for soil surveyors complete for use in Australia?

• Do the core competencies represent fair and reasonable expectations for soil surveyors in Australia?

• Do you support a competency-based written examination for all professionals employed as soil surveyors Submissions can be lodged to the ASSSI federal office (office@asssi.asn. au) before November 30 2010. To read the document go to the website www.asssi.asn.au.

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IRRIGATION AUSTRALIA

About the Certification Board A strong governance framework for the board is required to ensure: • IAL’s management of the Certification Program is fair, reasonable and accountable • Certified Irrigation Professionals are accountable for acting professionally and responsibly in the provision of irrigation services • That the good name and integrity of IAL certification is maintained therefore providing value for Certified Irrigation Professionals in the marketplace and a key point of differentiation from other competitors.

The Board’s functions are specified in a Terms of Reference approved by the IAL Board. These functions are: 1. Establish, periodically review and manage processes related to: • a code of conduct for all IAL Certification holders • continuing professional development requirements for all IAL’s certifications • a disputes resolution process to resolve disputes between Certified Irrigation Professionals and clients, including communications to each party involved in a dispute • a disciplinary process to enable a systematic, consistent and formalised response to breaches of the Code of Conduct by IAL certification holders • peer review or audit of certification holders • audit of IAL processes for issuing, recording and promoting certifications.

2. Develop and implement any other policy, procedure and systems necessary to ensure and protect the integrity of the IAL’s certification framework, and individual IAL certification holders.

3. Consider and endorse, reject or amend recommendations made to it by the IAL’s Professional Development Committee in relation to the IAL’s certification program.

The Certification Board reports to the IAL Board, not to IAL CEO or staff, to preserve the independence of the governance from the administration of the program.

TRAINING

TRAINING AN INVESTMENT, NOT A COST For both Scott Needham, who owns Mudgee Rural Supplies and employs 15 staff, and Mike Dorge, Vinedex’s Northern Region General Manager, training such as the 2-week Introduction to Irrigation course, should be seen by industry members as an investment in the future.

They both are on firm ground in commenting, with Scott having just completed the 2-week Introduction to Irrigation course, held in September at Caloundra in Queensland, and Vinidex having been a supporter of the course since it was first run five years ago (other supporters are Advanced Industrial Products, Davey, Grundfos, HR Products, Iplex, Philmac, Toro and IAL).

For Scott the course gave him a hands on opportunity to learn more about the technical aspects of irrigation.

“After a pretty hard ten years I could see irrigation in our area expanding dramatically and I wanted to be a part of an industry that is growing. I wanted knowledge that would give me a more hands’ on approach to expanding the business, and the course certainly provided this,” explained Scott.

Another reason Scott put his hand up was that a staff member who runs the

water part of the business attended the course two years ago and “loved it”.

According to Mike, Scott’s enthusiasm for the course doesn’t seem to be industry wide, and he was disappointed to see the response it attracted this year.

One of the reasons given for this was length of the course.

“My belief is that two weeks training should not be the barrier if we are serious in lifting the skill base in this area. I can only reflect back to my time when Southern Cross personnel were required to undertake a two-month training course. At the time, this training was well recognised throughout the industry.

“I appreciate that some smaller businesses find the two weeks a strain, but I am sure if they seriously considered the benefits that the students receive from this, it would change their view,” said Mike.

Scott’s take on this was that getting back into “school” was a bit of a strain on most participants, and that having it in two separate weeks would work better.

Mike explained that before the course had been offered, a number of groups were providing their own training.

“Some of us were concerned that this training was being delivered to a select part of the industry and it needed to be more widespread. After discussions with

other suppliers on how we can achieve the best return for our investment, we decided that the best possible was forward was to approach the IAL, which was in a better position to offer this training,” he said.

With this in mind, Mike said that it is important that the industry supports the training as suppliers will consider putting their resources into other areas if it doesn’t.

“We know if we want our businesses to be successful, then we need to provide adequate training to our people. That’s why Vinidex choose to sponsor the course in the first place.”

In a challenge to the industry, Mike emphasised that he thought the future of the course was in jeopardy unless the industry was prepared to continue to support it.

“The training school can be modified if it isn’t providing what the industry requires. In coming years companies that have skilled personnel involved in the water Industry will gain the rewards,” he said.

This is a sentiment that Scott certainly agrees with. When asked whether he would recommend the course to industry members, his answer was quick and definite - “Absolutely”.

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FEATURE

WESTERN SYDNEY: A LABORATORY FOR UNDERSTANDING PERIURBAN WATER ISSUES Basant Maheshwari, Bruce Simmons and WISER Project team, University of Western Sydney & CRC for Irrigation Futures, Sydney

Water challenges in peri urban areas Water in peri-urban landscapes around metropolitan cities and regional centres is essential for producing fresh food locally, keeping parks, gardens and sporting ovals green and sustaining local businesses and jobs.

As the fastest growing region of Metropolitan Sydney, Western Sydney is the third largest producer of Australia's GDP and the key peri-urban region in Australia. Water availability in the region strongly influences the health of the Hawkesbury-Nepean river system, the supply of fresh fruit and vegetables for Sydney, operation of water dependent businesses and commercial fishing. Without water security, we cannot achieve local food security, job security, growth in tourism, adequate opportunities for sport and leisure activities and the overall quality of life.

One of the key challenges for Western Sydney is that its population is set to increase significantly over the

Population growth in peri urban areas such as Western Sydney is putting pressure on waterways and land that is being used for agricultural and horticultural production. Dealing with these pressures is becoming a significant challenge for affected communities, planners and government.

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next 20 years. The proposed NorthWest and South-West Growth Centres will add about 600,000 people to the 400,000 already living to the South Creek catchment. In addition, there will be further population growth during this period in the individual city council areas as part of their natural growth and expansion strategy.

This poses a considerable threat to regional commerce, industry, and most importantly agriculture, as well as for recreational sites, such as playing fields and reserves which require significant amounts of water to sustain their user friendly quality.

The psychology of water challenges When water is plentiful, we tend not to worry how it is used so some waste and misuse is often tolerated. When there is competition for water, management becomes an important task. When the supply of water reaches its limit, sustainability becomes important. When we face a situation where some users will miss out on water, we get into crisis mode and the security of water as a community resource is in everyone’s mind.

When dealing with water resource sustainability and security, water is no longer just a physical resource. It needs to be considered from a range of perspectives – environmental, hydrological, social, economical, cultural, policy, institutional, political and community. This is when water management becomes a much more complex, messy and difficult resource to manage, sustain and secure. This is what we face in the peri-urban region of Western Sydney and other developing regions across Australia. It is this challenge that gave birth to the WISER project under the auspicious of ‘System Harmonisation’ program of CRC for Irrigation Futures (www.irrigationfutures. org.au).

The WISER project Water and Irrigation Strategy Enhancement through Regional Partnership (WISER) project is about working together for a better future of

peri-urban landscapes with water as the key driver for keeping people, the river, the environment and the economy healthy (also see www.uws.edu.au/wiser).

The WISER project team consisted of researchers from the universities of Western Sydney, Melbourne and New England, as well as the NSW Department of Industry and Investment and CSIRO Land & Water. The team closely worked with four Western Sydney councils (Blacktown, Hawkesbury, Liverpool and Penrith) and a number of government agencies, industry organisations and NGOs. The project team, over the last four years, worked collaboratively to develop tools, engage stakeholders and community and made available key data and learning on key water issues to assist with informed policy development and decision making. The focus of the project was about understanding water resource sustainability and security issues and bringing people together and using science to connect ideas, resolve conflict and develop consensus.

What did we do in this project?

In the WISER project, we used Western Sydney region as the ‘laboratory’ for understanding peri-urban issues and challenges and identifying options for regional water security. The project’s main challenge was to identify ways of harmonising the use of potable water, stormwater, effluent and groundwater and to develop tools and a framework that will help with carrying out integrated water resources planning.

The complexity of securing the Western Sydney’s water supplies was tackled through a system harmonisation approach. This involved understanding trends in water supplies, demands and conflicts, identifying options and opportunities for improved river health, and understanding the rapidly changing hydrology of Western Sydney, which was being affected by ongoing urbanisation and land use changes through the planned North-West and South-West Growth Centres, Metro Water strategy, and water use by irrigators and other businesses.

Farming against the odds in Western Sydney Not many people would associate the western urban fringes of Sydney with a vibrant horticulture and agriculture sector. In fact, there are than 650 irrigators in the Lower Nepean Hawkesbury area growing crops as varied as turf, vegetables, stonefruit, lucerne, berries and citrus. Many of these farms are family operated, small in size (the average size is from 20 to 30 ha) and supply the Sydney market.

Until recently, most irrigation water has been pumped from the Nepean and Hawkesbury rivers and their tributaries.

Paul Rasmussen, an irrigator who chairs the Lower Nepean Hawkesbury Water Users Association, says that as the population of Western Sydney has grown, this has threatened the water source.

“As Sydney has grown, ninety-seven per cent of the fresh water that would have flowed into the Nepean now stops at Warragamba Dam and goes to Sydney,” explained Paul.

Add to this the fact that a new water treatment plant that will come on line at the end of this year will affect access to recycled water, and options for irrigators are becoming very limited.

“In the past we have had access to 211 ML/day of treated water, however, one consequence of the new treatment plant is that treated water will be of a higher quality and a substantial proportion is likely to go to meet environmental flow targets,” he said.

Irrigators are in discussions with the NSW Government at present trying to retain the 211 ML/day.

According to Paul, another big issue for farmers in the area is one that The study also involved: understanding the role of water in primary production, identifying opportunities and constraints as influenced by water quantity and quality, analysing market options and mechanisms to improve water productivity and environmental outcomes, and reviewing water policies, institutional barriers and community aspirations and identifying changes needed to improve water management.

A number of regional water scenarios were assessed as part of this study to understand viable options and opportunities to assist with regional water security.

What did we learn?

Compared to urban or rural water scenarios, it was revealed very early in the study that in peri-urban regions water

Paul Rasmussen, irrigator in the Lower Nepean Hawkesbury, is optimistic about the future of agriculture in his area as long as government recognises its importance and supports it. is common where city fringes have expanded into neighbouring farmland.

And that is conflicts over right to farm.

Many urban dwellers are unfamiliar with farm operations and find it hard to understand why a pump might need to be operated into the night or why tractors need to be started up and operated early in the morning.

The potential for conflict is almost unlimited.

Surprisingly, and against these odds, Paul says that farming does have a future in areas like Western Sydney as long as governments put priority on growing food close to urban centres and legislate to protect farming activities.

“I’m confident that seventy per cent of our irrigators will still be here in ten years time if we can get these two issues right,” said Paul.

Did you know?

• Farming in peri-urban regions use 3% of Australia’s agricultural land, but produces over 25% of the value of Australia’s agricultural production.

• Peri urban areas contain over 50% of Australia’s threatened biodiversity.

Councils

Where to from here?

Community

Researchers

is made more challenging as a result of a plethora of dubious quality water data and reports scattered over a range of agencies and other groups. The water cycle analysis of the South Creek catchment indicated that by the year 2030, when the two growth centres are fully developed, the demand for water for non-potable use is likely to be greater than 40 GL/yr. This increase will represent added pressure on currently identified potable water supplies. This also means that water for home gardens, sporting ovals and public open spaces and other outdoor uses will have to be found from alternative sources such as stormwater harvesting and effluent reuse.

One important outcome of this project was that it provided a voice to a diverse group of local stakeholders and helped them to work with government agencies to develop a clear, implementable, shared water vision to support regional planning. A process for stakeholder and community engagement and a set of models or frameworks for integrated water resources planning (e.g. hydrologic model for peri-urban water cycle analysis and policy risk assessment manual) are now available and can be adapted for use across peri-urban regions in Australia and beyond.

Another achievement was that the work of the WISER project, for the first time, has led to the signing of the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between the Western Sydney local councils and UWS and other CRC for Irrigation partners to work towards implementing and managing Western Sydney’s water futures and regional water business partnerships. Further, the project helped in a greater level of community engagement and encouraged input from ordinary citizens for their ideas to influence long-term regional solutions and strategies.

The WISER Project

h

Commercial Partners

Govt. Agencies

Framework for collaborating and engaging with stakeholders. is managed by many more entities with limited coordination and inadequate understanding of the whole water cycle and water productivity. Furthermore, water management at regional level

Although the CRC IF has wound up, this doesn’t mean that activity in this area stops. The community processes that were developed as part of WISER will continue, with local councils, government agencies and stakeholder groups such as irrigators.

The legacy of this project is that it has put the huge issue of water management in peri-urban areas under the spotlight and, more importantly, provided frameworks for it to be shared more equitably and in a more sustainable way. Governments around Australia now have a big role in taking up the issue and incorporating the outcomes of the project as a way of managing water in the urban areas that are encroaching into valuable farming land.

IRRIGATION AUSTRALIA

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SMART FARMS

SATELLITE & SMS WATER MANAGEMENT SYSTEM: A NEW TECHNOLOGY FOR HAWKESBURY NEPEAN IRRIGATORS Scott Machar, Industry & Investment NSW, Wollstonecraft Irrigators in the Hawkesbury Nepean (HN) area are enthusiastic about the introduction of innovative technology that provides real-time irrigation scheduling advice and helps them improve water use efficiency.

The Satellite and SMS Water Management System is being delivered as part of the Industry & Investment NSW WaterSmart Farms project. It was developed by scientists from the CSIRO as part of a CRC for Irrigation Futures project.

The service uses high-level technology to deliver simple and effective information to farmers.

“Researchers visit and evaluate each farmer’s irrigation system to provide them with precise, customised information; this ensures that each farmer receives the maximum benefit from the service,” said CSIRO scientist, Richard Soppe.

The technology is also being delivered under separate projects with wine grape growers in the Griffith region and cotton growers in the Gwydir region.

“In regions where the service has been operating for several seasons, participating irrigators have reported several benefits in the delivery of irrigation advice via SMS. Several long-time growers see the service as a confirmation of their irrigation scheduling based on years of experience.

Others, especially growers who have recently changed technology or farming approach, use the information as a guide and follow the advice as closely as possible. A third group use the information as a benchmarking tool through the anonymous comparison with other growers in the same sector,” said Richard.

How the system works The system consists of three main components: 1. a satellite that provides images of the crop for each farmer's irrigation block of interest 2. a series of weather stations located in various parts of the HN catchment 3. a central computer system that combines satellite data, weather station data and individual irrigator data to determine the irrigation scheduling advice.

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The main components of the Satellite & SMS Water Management System.

The system provides information to the participating irrigator through either mobile phone in the form of Short Message Service (SMS) or the internet.

The SMS is sent daily and advises the irrigator how much they need to irrigate to meet their crop water requirement for the day. The information is tailored for each individual farm and simply advises the pump run time required to deliver the necessary irrigation. The farmer decides when to irrigate and how much guided by the SMS message.

The website (www.irrigateway.net/HN) contains general rainfall information that is publicly available as well as a dedicated page for individual irrigators containing information that is specific to their farm.

This information includes detailed records and graphs of irrigation and weather data throughout the growing season. Using this data, each irrigator can view daily water balance information and compare their performance with other irrigators and also against their previous season’s data to try and continually improve water use efficiency.

There is a great diversity of farming industries in the HN catchment area and their irrigation needs are extremely varied.

Therefore, the development team from CSIRO designed a simplified variation of the service to meet the needs of certain irrigator groups, such as very small farms and market gardeners with a variety of crop

types. This service indicates the maximum time period that the farmer should irrigate for the given day and does not require them to provide irrigation and rainfall data back to the central computer system. This service is also useful for those farmers from a non-English speaking background.

Project co-ordinator with Industry & Investment NSW, Ho Dang, believes that the system can play an extremely valuable role as part of an irrigator's overall farm management. “In today’s situation where farming has become a competitive business and water resources are becoming increasingly variable, the Satellite & SMS Water Management System provides farmers with a free tool that is effective and user friendly. Although the system itself will not provide physical water savings, the information can help irrigators achieve better water management in terms of productivity and crop quality with little investment in time,” he said.

The project started in September 2009 and already has 135 irrigators participating.

The Service is free as part of the WaterSmart Farms project until September 2011, at which time it is hoped it will become commercially available.

For further information contact Ho Dang at Industry & Investment NSW on phone (02) 4588 2161 or email ho.dang@industry. nsw.gov.au.

Note. The WaterSmart Farms project is part of the Hawkesbury Nepean River Recovery Program, which is funded by the Australian Government through its Water for the Future program.

CSIRO researchers John Hornbuckle (left) and Nick Car (right) with Industry & Investment NSW Project co-ordinator Ho Dang in front of one of the Hawkesbury Nepean weather stations

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IAL NEWS

CEO MESSAGE THE MURRAY DARLING BASIN PLAN: WHERE DOES IAL SIT? The Murray Darling Basin Plan must be the single most important document ever to come out of Canberra for Australia’s irrigators and the rural communities that they help support. It clearly has fundamental and far reaching implications for the businesses that are based in and rely on irrigation in the Murray Darling Basin, which is the majority of IAL’s members. In effect, the implications go far beyond the Basin.

There has never been such a challenge faced by this region, and I cannot think of any comparable challenge faced by any community in Australia previously. There is no wonder that there is such emotion and heartache being shown within these communities. When people do not have confidence in their future, when they fear losing their farms and jobs, their friends and their community, it strikes at the very essence of who they are, their aspirations and hopes for their family and themselves. It does not get any more emotionally traumatic.

It is a great pity then, that to date the one thing that is needed more than anything else in such a crisis – leadership - is missing. Yes, there are numerous firebrands out there, a multitude of orators, lots of rhetoric, some slick media opportunities, but no leadership.

As one of IAL’s Board Members said to me recently, “We don’t need a Basin Plan; we need a plan for the Basin”.

How right he was. What he meant was we must take a holistic view, consider the big picture; the interaction between the environment and irrigators, the implications for the communities, the short and long-term strategies required and look to both optimise the outcomes for all and ensure that whatever suite of changes and policies that is put in place provides a long-term solution. The Basin and everything dependent upon it is broken and must be fixed. Of course this is easier said than done, but that is where leadership comes in, and leadership starts with vision and from vision comes solutions. This is the hard bit.

IAL prides itself on being a professional organisation, one that uses facts, science and experience to provide solutions through and for its members.

While we can never claim to have the solutions to all the problems within the

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Murray Darling Basin, I believe we do have some of the important elements which will support some of the key long-term solutions.

When all the current emotive response to the Guide to the Basin Plan calms down and discussion and energy turns to answering the important questions around how we fix the Basin, IAL will be there to provide the knowledge and expertise of its members. We need to ensure that whatever the numbers, whatever the outcomes for each irrigator and community, the water that is available for irrigation will be well used to get maximum benefit; for the irrigator, the community and the environment.

It is worth remembering that IAL’s stated mission is “Best practice, professional irrigation for sustainable, healthy communities”. We will be working hard to ensure that mission is accomplished in the Murray Darling Basin.

Irrigation knowledge, expertise, training, professional services and good products will be the foundation to ensuring irrigation efficiency drives onfarm viability, which in turn will help sustain the surrounding communities for the long-term. This is a message IAL has consistently delivered to ministers

YOUR IAL BOARD MEMBERS Chairman Peter Toome Adcon Telemetry Australia Pty Ltd PROSPECT SA 5082 P (08) 8342-5343 M 0438 813 678 E p.toome@adcon.at Deputy Chairman Tom Vanderbyl SunWater Limited BRISBANE QLD 4002 P (07) 3120-0105 M 0411 066 793 E tom.vanderbyl@sunwater. com.au Scott Barber State Water Corporation DUBBO NSW 2830 P (02) 6841-2052 M 0428 245 485 E scott.barber@statewater. com.au

and government departments, both Federal and State, and one we intend to keep delivering.

Chris Bennett CEO

Post Script It has been very pleasing to see some maturity come into the debate lately.

The roundtable meeting Tony Burke called with industry peak bodies 19 October was very positive. While it did not solve all the problems, it did indicate that the Government was taking the issue seriously. IAL will be following up further with other relevant ministers and politicians.

A forum IAL attended 25 October of more than one hundred irrigation organisations, local councils and other interested community groups (including banks and unions) brought a much wider perspective which was very useful. It is now understood that the issue is not just about the irrigator, it is about communities and real people.

This is an important move in the right direction because the full extent of the impact of the Basin Plan is starting to be realised. IAL has pledged its support for a working group to progress agreed outcomes from the forum.

Ann-Maree Boland RM Consulting Group CAMBERWELL VIC 3124 P (03) 9882-2670 M 0427 679 042 E anne-mareeb@rmcg.com.au

Ian Moorehouse Goulburn-Murray Water TATURA VIC 3616 P (03) 5833-5515 M 0409 438 323 E ianm@g-mwater.com.au

Colin Campbell Hydro Plan Pty Ltd BENTLEY WA 6983 P (08) 9470-2233 M 0412 513 886 E cjc@hydroplan.com.au

Karen Murday Department of Natural Resources & Water BRISBANE QLD 4001 P (07) 3247-4405 M 0414 607 716 E karen.murday@nrw.qld.gov.au

Simon Cowland-Cooper Broadwater Consultants LABRADOR QLD 4215 P (07) 5591 5353 M 0415 733 431 E simon@simoncooperassoc.com.au Vern Costelow Water Dynamics PACKENHAM VIC 3810 P (03) 9874-6655 M 0417 356 694 E vcostelow@typac.com.au

Peter Smith Department of Primary Industries TAMWORTH NSW 2340 P (02) 6763-1262 M 0411 128 437 E peter.smith@industry.nsw. gov.au

SA DEVELOPS REGIONAL STRATEGY Over the last 12 months, the SA IAL regional committee has been focussed on developing a greater profile with government and policymakers, and better relationships with allied industry partners to make available greater member access to business opportunities, e.g. IPOS, Waterwise programs and policy development in the state’s Water for Good Strategy. As our committee matured, we saw that what we also needed was a new regional strategy.

That’s why, earlier this year, a large number of SA Regional IAL members, industry delegates who weren't members and allied industry representatives gathered at a workshop to develop a regional strategic plan. Participants were well briefed on the fact that the outcome for the strategic plan would be for the “Development of a South Australian professional irrigation industry”. This resulted in a number of well structured suggestions being placed on butcher’s paper very quickly.

These were later easily included within four strategic elements that came forward during the workshop. These elements were: build capacity, develop markets, establish industry relationships and communicate reputation.

Once the group did this a vision was quickly developed. That vision is: SA IAL will lead the development of a professional irrigation industry that embraces best practice to underpin healthy, sustainable urban and rural communities and lifestyles.

A summary of the strategy is as follows:

Goals • Develop the reputation of South Australia’s irrigation industry via individual and business capacity building programs • Be recognised by Government as a valued influence and partner contributing positively to the market development of the irrigation industry • Act as voice on state wide irrigation issues in association with allied associations

Strategy The strategy to achieve these goals is: To be member focused with the provision of services for the development of professional irrigation individuals and businesses Member services comprise four strategic elements: • Build capacity of individuals and businesses • Communicate reputation • Develop markets • Establish industry relationships.

IAL already provides certification, training, skills and knowledge that can help build individual capacity. With building business capacity the SA IAL intentions are to use existing state and national programs for improving business skills and referring SA members to suitable programs or facilitating co branding of business programs for irrigation and water.

The IAL’s SA regional committee’s regional strategic plan at a glance.

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IAL NEWS

MY VIEW

In October the media provided saturation coverage when the Guide to the Murray Darling Plan was released by the Murray Darling Basin Authority.

As to be expected, opinion ranged widely about the implications of the publicised water cuts and how they would affect irrigators and regional communities. In this column, Jeremy Cape gives his view.

The release of the Murray Darling Guide to future water allocations in the Murray Darling Basin has led to widespread predictions of the decimation of the irrigation industry, with the loss of thousands of jobs and millions of dollars of production. The experience of the Rural Water Use Efficiency program in Queensland suggests that it ain’t necessarily so. On the contrary, it is an opportunity to transform our irrigation industry into a shining example of world’s best practice, matching consumptive, productive use with the sustainable yield from the Basin catchments.

The key question, which can be expressed in economic terms, is, can a 40% reduction in resource use by offset by increased productivity so that output remains the same or even improves?

Statistics from the irrigation industry suggest that 40% improvements in productivity (water use efficiency) are achievable.

Productivity gains, the economists tell us, arise mostly from the adoption of more efficient technologies, investment in human capital and “know how” and the development of new more efficient technologies. So what evidence is there that indicates that such gains are possible?

Currently in Australia irrigation systems of all types are designed, installed and operated as the irrigator sees fit. In spite of the fact that standards and codes exist for all of these aspects of irrigation, there is no requirement for the water user to maintain even the most basic efficiencies. We have a building code and water use labelling scheme for domestic appliances, but no constraints are placed on the way in which we use 70% of our national fresh water resources.

Standards exist, for example, which describe the efficiency of irrigation drippers. Drippers are classified in International Standards into Class A, B and unclassified categories. An irrigator buying a Class A dripper knows within 5% how much water they will be applying through that dripper. By contrast, a dripper that cannot be classified may vary in its discharge by over 20%. Standards exist for almost every component of irrigation systems.

Just by requiring irrigators to buy and install system comprising equipment that meets these standards will yield significant productivity gains.

One of the key irrigation management decisions is deciding when to water.

The most recent data collected indicates that over 70% of irrigators make this decision on the basis of their “experience and knowledge”. This is in spite of the fact that Australia is one of the world leaders in developing and manufacturing scheduling equipment which we export to irrigation industries around the world.

Changing the timing and duration of each irrigation event has been shown to lead to productivity improvements of 20% in water use efficiency.

A critical requirement to achieving these potential gains is by investing in

the people who make these decisions.

This means not only supporting training for irrigators but also supporting the commercial industry that supports them. The public sector that used to provide farm extension services scarcely exists and rebuilding this capacity through the public or private sector, with a commitment to long term ongoing support is necessary.

Without this support productivity gains through the use of improved practices are unlikely to happen.

The Queensland Rural Water Use Efficiency program, which ran from 1999 to 2004, was independently evaluated and was found to have achieved a 10% improvement in productivity over a 4- to 5-year period. The review found it was a good return on the public investment and that it contributed to significant improvements in water use efficiency.

Importantly, the program involved a comprehensive interaction of research, training and industry development.

These gains resulted from a relatively modest investment of $40 to $50 million dollars for the whole program, compared with the money currently set aside for the buyback schemes.

Water efficiency initiatives in other states tell the same story and provide the MDA with a blueprint to follow.

The report of a national workshop held to evaluate these programs describes a blueprint for how to introduce and maintain such water use improvements schemes.

Rather than generating headlines that describe the issue in win-lose terms, that describe a battle between the environment and the irrigation sector, we should examine the implications of the plan by looking at the evidence.

Appeals to emotion make good headlines but they do not advance a solution to a problem that all sectors acknowledge exists. Our challenge is to take the gains that have already been made by irrigators and link them with better use of technology, with building human capacity to cement Australia’s role as the world leader in irrigation practice.

To all our IAL members All the best for the festive season and for 2011 30

IRRIGATION AUSTRALIA

IAL NEWS

AQUAMISER A TESTAMENT TO FAR SIGHTEDNESS Kathryn Eden, Greene Eden Watering Systems Pty Ltd, Adelaide Many of IAL’s long time members, especially those in South Australia, would remember Lance Gladigau who, sadly, died in 2000.

Some of you will remember his dogged determination to get things done, while others would remember being involved with him in lengthy debates (and sometimes arguments) on future objectives and decisions.

Whatever your memories of Lance, everyone will remember his commitment to water saving and management being

Lance Gladigau attending to final installation and calibration of the Aquamiser at Stan Tilley reserve. The pole kept the Aquamiser out of reach of vandals.

equalled only by his dedication to developing a more professional and respected industry.

During the mid 1990s Lance saw his innovation, the “Aquamiser”, installed in a range of domestic projects. It was, however, Tilley Reserve at Tea Tree Gully in Adelaide that provided the opportunity for including it in a commercial site.

AQUAMISER BEFORE IPOS It was 1995 and Tilley Reserve was Greene Eden’s first commercial turf subsurface drip irrigation project. It provided the perfect environment for including the Aquamiser.

This was long before IPOS (Irrigated Public Open Space) and water restrictions, when Lance used evapotranspiration and crop factors to calibrate the Aquamiser to regulate irrigation scheduling. It filled during both rain and irrigation and reactivated the controller when moisture had evaporated to a certain level.

In the 1990s drought management wasn’t the issue that it is now, and water saving technology was not a high priority in the marketplace or in the irrigation industry. For this reason, only a few entrepreneurial clients saw the value of water management. Perhaps, if the industry had taken more notice of Lance’s innovation back in those early years, water restrictions may not have been so hard to adjust to.

After 15 years the Aquamiser has been replaced by Greene Eden with a more comprehensive central control system, but the essence remains the same – to match irrigation water use to the plant’s water requirements. No more and no less.

Lance certainly was ahead of his time and the Aquamiser will take pride of place in Greene Eden’s offices, as a memorial to this far-sighted individual who made a difference.

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THE BIG ISSUE

THE BIG ISSUE IN THE BALANCE: WHAT TO MAKE OF THE PROPOSED MURRAY-DARLING BASIN PLAN? Jenni Mattila and Karen Lang, Mattila Lawyers, Sydney No one said it would be easy. Balancing the environmental welfare of the Murray-Darling Basin with the social and financial welfare of the rural communities that rely on it was always going to be a challenge. Since the release on 8 October of the Guide to the proposed Basin Plan, it’s become apparent there is still a long road ahead. In this article, Jenni Mattila and Karen Lang consider some of the key issues and possible outcomes.

The recent release by the Murray Darling Basin Authority of the Guide to the proposed Basin Plan and reaction to it in regional communities has shown just how hard it is going to be to balance the welfare of the environment with the social and economic welfare of the basin’s rural communities.

How will the Basin Plan work?

Water for the environment. The main aim of the Basin Plan is to return water to the environment. This means first establishing what the hydrological characteristics of an environmentally healthy Basin would be, then determining the amount of water required to deliver this outcome, and finally removing that amount from the current pool of water available for consumptive use.

The MDBA determined that, overall, 22,100 to 26,700 GL of surface water and 99 to 227 GL of groundwater is needed annually to ensure the Basin’s environmental health. In terms of surface water, this is 3,000 to 7,600 GL a year more than is currently set aside for the environment. However, the MDBA has set a cap of 4,000 GL a year because it considers any more than that ‘will not represent an optimisation of the economic, social and environmental outcomes under the Water Act’.

Exactly how that water will be distributed amongst the key ecosystems and environmental assets is not specified in the Guide. It will be set out in Environmental Watering Plans (EWP), to be developed.

Water for consumptive use. The Basin Plan specifies limits on the amount of water available for ‘consumptive use’, including agriculture, mining, manufacturing, town water supplies, recreational and cultural activities, and indigenous purposes – i.e. everything but water for the environment.

The limits on consumptive use are known as sustainable diversion limits (SDLs). SDLs have been specified for each of the surface and groundwater areas in the Basin (Volumes 3 to 21 of the Guide) with the mechanics of how those will be distributed between entitlement holders to be determined by the Basin states in the Water Resource Plans they are required to develop. The MDBA has identified 29 surface water areas and 78 groundwater areas. These SDLs are much lower than the diversion limits currently in place.

Bridging the gap between the current and proposed diversion limits. To offset the gap between the current diversion limits and the proposed SDLs, the Australian Government has committed to buy back water entitlements, implement infrastructure investment programs, and give effect to risk allocation and temporary diversion provisions.

Buyback of water entitlements. The Australian Government will buy permanent water entitlements from permanent water entitlement holders who volunteer to

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IRRIGATION AUSTRALIA

sell them. The purchased entitlements will be held by the Commonwealth Environmental Water Holder and applied to the environment in accordance with the EWP. Water entitlements will be bought back in the water trading market. The Basin Plan will include rules for trading or transferring tradeable water rights. These rules will complement the water market rules and water charge rules in the Water Act. The aim of the Basin Plan water trading rules, according to the Guide, is to develop an efficient water-trading regime by removing barriers to trade, such as inconsistent interstate rules or inefficient processes and lack of easily accessible information.

While such trade is covered by provisions in state legislation, these provisions will need to be consistent with the framework of the Basin Plan and its trading rules. In 2008-09 about $2.8 billion of water transactions Australia-wide took place, most of which occurred in the MDB. Infrastructure investment programs. The Australian Government has already committed $3.7 billion for irrigation infrastructure, of which $650 million is for the Private Irrigators Infrastructure Operators Program (PIIOP), and some $200 million for the Strengthening Basin Communities. Other major Commonwealth initiatives include: 15 State Priority Projects agreed with Basin States under the 2008 Intergovernmental Agreement on MDB Reform, of which thirteen are State-led and two are Commonwealth-led; the Menindee Lakes Project ($400 million); and the On Farm Irrigation Efficiency Program.

Whether these financial commitments will translate into funded projects remains to be seen. Also, it is not yet clear what modelling (if any) has been done to determine the water to be saved under these programs. In any event, any water savings as a result of these programs will need to be considered as part of bridging the ‘gap’.

Risk allocation provisions. Any changes in the methodology for water allocation (as a result of new knowledge, government policy, natural disaster or climate change) would affect the value of permanent water entitlements and create financial risks. The MDBA has consequently established provisions for sharing these risks between individual entitlement holders and governments.

In the case of changes in allocation methodology arising from new knowledge or government policy, such as the Basin Plan, the Commonwealth will bear 100% of the risk ‘after consideration of 3% attributable to climate change in regard to surface water (0% for groundwater)’ (MDBA website). In such cases the Commonwealth will provide compensation for the reduction in entitlements to the SDLs. However, the MDBA assumes that the transfer of permanent entitlements to the environment should improve the reliability of annual allocations. And given the Australian Government’s

THE BIG ISSUE

commitment to bridge any gap between the current and the sustainable diversion limits, these risk allocation provisions may not need to be activated.

Temporary diversion provisions. Concerns about the SDLs having flow-on effects to local businesses and communities have led to temporary diversion provisions being included in the Basin Plan. These are a mechanism for phasing in SDLs over a 5-year period. They are intended to address inequities arising between entitlements holders due to the fact that implementation of SDLs will be staggered.

SDLs will be staggered because they will not come into effect until water plans already in operation (i.e. Water Sharing Plans, Water Allocation Plans, Water Resource Plans, Bulk Water Entitlements) expire. The first Basin State to implement the SDLs will be SA because some of its current plans are due to expire in mid-2012. Most water plans already in place in Queensland, NSW and the rest of SA are due to expire in mid-2014. Bulk entitlement arrangements in Victoria will be subject to the new SDLs in 2019.

the height of the drought, many of those may have already sold their entitlements. It is also unclear whether those farmers are in any of the Basin’s catchment areas.

Any buyback strategy must appreciate that buying water entitlements is only of benefit when water is actually allocated to those entitlements. In a Senate Inquiry in 2008, Water management in the Coorong and Lower Lakes (including consideration of the Emergency Water (Murray-Darling Basin Rescue) Bill 2008, it was revealed that as at 10 October 20008 only 443.7 ML of water was actually available to the Government out of 4.8 GL of entitlements that had transferred to the it after buybacks.

The Guide indicates that the main tool for achieving reductions to meet the SDLs is buybacks of water entitlements. If people are unwilling to voluntarily sell their permanent entitlements, what next?

Infrastructure investment. It is unclear to what extent the current infrastructure investment programs will translate into actual water savings which can bridge the ‘gap’.

What hurdles lie in the mechanics of the Basin Plan?

Achieving the SDLs Meeting environmental water requirements. The language of the Guide appears to blur the lines between the amount of water required for the environment being a theoretical amount, such as an entitlement, and a physical amount, such as an allocation. So which is it?

If it is a reference to water in a physical sense, this will have more dire consequences for people in the MDB and put more pressure on the water recovery efforts required by the Australian Government to offset the reductions necessary to achieve the SDLs. In recent years drought has meant many of those with water entitlements have had zero water allocation. An entitlement is a cap on the right to water, which is subject to: • rainfall and water availability in the relevant catchment area, which of itself is climate-dependant • priority of the relevant licence, including the number of entitlement holders in that catchment holder.

Any buyback strategy to fund the ‘gap’ will require more water entitlements to be purchased than first thought.

What are the socio-economic impacts? The Guide’s conclusion that there would be 800 jobs lost and a decrease of 1.1% in production in the MDB seems wildly optimistic, even at first glance and even to those not intimate with the region. This appears to have significantly underestimated the socio-economic impacts of the proposed Basin Plan.

In a bid to allay widespread concerns and public outrage that has ensued since the Guide’s release, on 14 October the Minister for Regional Australia, Simon Crean, announced a 6-month federal parliamentary inquiry into these aspects of the proposed Plan. Its findings are due for release late-April 2011.

Similarly, on 17 October 2010, the Chairman of the MDBA announced a study into the socio-economic implications of the Basin Plan, to be based on ‘‘extensive consultation’’ with local communities. This is expected to be completed mid-March 2011.

Until the outcomes of the inquiry and MDBA study, we can only continue to guess the real socio-economic impacts of the Plan.

Buyback. Will voluntary sales of permanent entitlements be enough to meet the Plan’s goal of securing up to 4000 GL additional water for the environment? In a survey by the Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics (ABARE), about 18% of farmers in the MDB indicated they were planning to sell some or all of their permanent entitlements between 2007-08 and 2010-11. As the survey was undertaken at

The impasse Since the Guide’s release, there has been a dramatic about-face by its architects. In response to public outcry, the MDBA and the Australian Government announced separate measures to improve community consultation and conduct further research into the Basin Plan’s socio-economic impacts. The Plan that Tony Burke finally takes to Parliament is likely to be a much watereddown version of what’s proposed in the Guide. As he said on 17 October, ‘We are in a situation now where the final version of this document, which gets signed off by me, needs to be able to survive the parliament.’

The Basin Plan is a ‘disallowable instrument’ and therefore needs to be passed by both the House of Representatives and the Senate. Given that there is a minority government which needs the support of the rural independents, there is little chance that the Plan in its current form would get through.

But this raises another potential problem, which will be exacerbated when the Greens gain the balance of power in the Senate on 1 July 2011. Under the Water Act (s 3), the Basin Plan must first and foremost give effect to relevant international agreements (e.g. the Ramsar Convention and the Biodiversity Convention) to protect and enhance biodiversity and address the threats to the Basin water resources. The Plan must address these environmental concerns. In contrast, it must only have regard to ‘the consumptive and other economic uses of Basin water resources’. This point was reiterated by Mike Taylor at Shepparton on 12 October when he said that the authority was required by law to put the environment first. In short, the socio-economic impacts of the Basin Plan, while important, are secondary considerations; they should be taken into account, but only to the extent that they do not interfere with the Act’s environmental objectives.

This issue was recently articulated by an Australian National University ecologist, Jamie Pittock. He warned that the 3000 to 4000 extra GL of water proposed in the Guide would not conserve the Murray-Darling wetlands and meet Australia’s obligations under the Ramsar Convention. He was quoted as saying, ‘There is a legal argument to be made to the High Court that because the Water Act is predicated on fulfilling our obligations under Ramsar, if that is not done … the court should intervene to make sure the treaty obligations are respected’ . And he makes a valid point.

This means the Government is damned if it does take the socio-economic impacts into account, and damned if it doesn’t.

The only foreseeable way out of this impasse would be to amend the Water Act itself. And this would need to be done before 1 July 2011.

IRRIGATION AUSTRALIA

33

BASIN PLAN

MURRAY DARLING BASIN DRAFT PLAN: OPPORTUNITY OR THREAT? In October the Murray Darling Basin Authority released its much awaited guide to the plan. The reaction has been quick and the criticism furious.

Not everyone, however, is critical.

Below we provide two reactions to the plan – one that looks at the plan as an opportunity to correct an “environmental mistake”, while the other says it “doesn’t hold water”.

We’ll leave it up to you to draw your own conclusions.

Water Industry Alliance welcomes Murray Darling Basin Draft Plan The Water Industry Alliance has welcomed the Murray Darling Basin Authority’s Plan Guide as a historic step in addressing what is arguably Australia's greatest environmental mistake.

“Australia now stands on the edge of rewiring the basin and creating the world's most efficient food bowl, while also restoring one of the world's greatest rivers,” said Water Industry Alliance Chief Executive Officer, Joe Flynn.

According to Joe, at least 80% of basin irrigators have yet to adopt world-class precision farming such as soil sensors, so there is a lot growers can to do to profitably adapt to less water.

“Thirty per cent less water doesn’t mean 30% less jobs and food. It can mean that we have to get 30% more efficient,” he said.

The alliance believes that the global community will be closely watching how this plan is adopted over the next few years.

“The over-allocated Murray River is typical of many of the world's great rivers that are slowly dying, and there is currently intense interest around the world to see if Australia can show how to restore the health and flow of this great river,” explained Joe. The fact that, for the first time in history, one authority is looking at the river as a complete system needs to be applauded the alliance believes.

“Critics of the plan need to step back and judge it in context of the last century of failed water management.

Something needs to be done and this is

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IRRIGATION AUSTRALIA

Reaction to the MDBA Basin Plan Guide and recommendations for how to share this water resource has been fast and varied.

a step in the right direction.

“Irrigators and basin communities either need to adopt innovative water technology practices now or face extinction.”

Joe said that the MDBA also needed to lead from the front and use precision greening technology to maximise ecological health as the days of river managers hoping for the best by using outdated flood irrigation for wetlands have to be left behind.

NFF: Basin Plan Guide “Simply doesn’t hold water” According to National Farmers’ Federation (NFF) President, David Crombie, the numbers in the MDBA Basin Plan Guide are worse than anyone expected and the Federal Government must intervene to resurrect public confidence.

“If the bureaucrats at the MurrayDarling Basin Authority (MDBA) get their way Basin areas could see water cuts more than 37% for the Murray, 43% for the Murrumbidgee and 37%

for the Gwydir in NSW; 45% in the Ovens, Loddon and Campaspe in Victoria; 35% in the SA Murray and in Queensland 45% in the Nebine, Moonie and Warrego with 39% for the Condamine Balonne.

“Australian food grown fresh for Australian consumers will take a massive hit and Australian families will have to get used to paying more and relying more on imports. In the process, thousands of jobs will be shed, inflicting immense direct pain on regional communities,” he said.

According to the NFF, around 93% of all food consumed in Australia is grown here and 40% of all the food we produce as a nation comes from the basin. Agricultural production and environmental needs are not mutually exclusive, they can and need to be balanced, but the MDBA has made no attempt to do so.

It said the guide was “half-baked”, and accused the MDBA of not examining engineering options or water-saving technologies to give more > continued on page 36

“Critics of the plan need to step back and judge it in context of the last century of failed water management. Something needs to be done and this is a step in the right direction.

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BASIN PLAN > continued from page 34

water to environmental needs that could minimise water cuts for food production and regional communities.

Rather, it said the MDBA had only used some environmental water (around 705 GL), with the remaining environmental water quarantined, meaning it is not included in the final wash up. What this meant was a lack of goodwill from the authority in balancing environmental, farm production and community needs. All water in the basin must be accounted for if the MDBA is to be taken seriously.

“What the MDBA has done is opt for an easy path, a simplistic accounting construct based on traditional river flows. We have to be smarter than that. As an example, water for wetlands may be delivered via pumps – negating the need for higher river-flow volumes – and, thereby, irrigation water may need little or no cut,” said David.

He called for Water Minister, Tony Burke, and Regional Development Minister, Simon Crean, to wrest back control and for the authority to go back to the drawing board and recalculate these numbers based on the smart options we have repeatedly called for.

“If we’re to get anything vaguely approximating a sensible approach to balancing these needs in an era of food shortages, both Ministers need to intervene and the MDBA’s needs to start again.”

Information You can download a copy of the guide from the MDBA website http://thebasinplan.mdba.gov.au/

MDBA announces social and economic study After several fiery meetings and criticism that the consequences of reducing allocation on regional communities haven’t been considered, the Murray-Darling Basin Authority announced that it will commission an expanded detailed social and economic study into the likely social and economic impacts of the proposed Basin Plan on local communities.

The study is scheduled to be completed by 15 March next year. It will consider the range of likely negative and positive human, social, financial and economic implications of the proposed Basin Plan within the Basin’s 19 regions, and will involve extensive consultation with local communities, including with local governments.

The study will cover issues including: • the direct effects of the proposed plan on agricultural production and other local industries • any indirect or flow-on effects of the proposed plan on local industries and other business activities, and also linked to wider community issues • the human impacts (both costs and benefits) of the proposed plan, including in relation to the mental health of individuals • wider social and cultural implications of the proposed plan • financial implications of the proposed plan.

YOUR GUIDE TO GOOD GARDEN WATERING AVAILABLE FREE TO IAL MEMBERS This four-page brochure, which provides a guide to gardeners on water use and irrigation systems, is available free of charge to IAL members.

High or low resolution versions can be downloaded from the IAL website (www.irrigation.org.au) or hard copies can be supplied by head office. The office can also supply a CD with a print-ready version so that organisations can add their logo to the brochure, print their own copies and distribute them.

Contact the IAL office or Helen Moody, the author of the brochure, on hmoody@aapt.net.au to obtain this.

The most recent organisation to use the brochure in this way is Central Highlands Water, a regional Water Authority based in Ballarat and serving over 120,000 people. They recently introduced a garden watering program in line with a shift from Stage 3 Water Restrictions to Stage 1. They requested the brochure saying, “I note you have a brochure which is ideal for the circumstances and I seek permission to reproduce this with our logo and the required credits to the author and supplier. We may need to make a couple of minor changes to reflect our climate but otherwise this would be perfect.”

This is exactly the way we like to see the brochure being used. It has been used in this way by a number of organisations in many parts of the country, such as the Geographe Catchment Council in WA, for the launch of their Bay OK program, a water quality improvement program.

Our SA industry development officer distributed it at a major garden irrigation project site and our Queensland industry development officer has used it in his public presentations, slightly rewording it to take account of local conditions. A number of retail irrigation and water tank businesses in various states also distribute copies and have added their logos.

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IRRIGATION AUSTRALIA

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CONTRACTORS CORNER DIAGNOSING PROBLEMS WITH DRIP TAPE The three most common problems with drip tape are wetting patterns that aren’t even, water coming out of holes other than emitters and non uniform water flows from emitters. This article identifies the most likely causes of these problems.

Non-uniform wetting patterns Non-uniform wetting patterns at the soil surface are often not related to manufacturing defects. Tape emitter flow rates may be very even, yet the wetted pattern on the top of the soil throughout a field may appear very erratic. This is especially noticeable with subsurface drip irrigation, where the tape is buried 20 cm or more below the ground surface.

Causes can include: • varying soil textures throughout a field (e.g. sand vs loam vs clay) • varying installation depths of the tape • varying soil compaction • different soil chemistry conditions.

Water exiting from holes other than emitters This problem is easy to spot, but it can be hard to identify the exact cause. Examine the damaged tape under a magnifying glass to help identify the cause or causes, which could include: • Insect damage. This is a common problem.

• Rodent damage. Rats and other rodents can cause a lot of damage.

• Rabbits and birds. These problems can appear on surfacelaid tape.

• Mechanical damage. Usually a result of handling (storage, transportation, installation or retrieval).

• Mechanical damage. This usually happens in the field and is caused by workers, tractors, etc.

• Sunburn of tape under plastic mulch (“lens” or “magnifying glass” effect).

• Bursting of the tape due to high pressure.

• Manufacturing defects.

Non-uniform flows from emitters themselves There is no shortcut to knowing if the emitter flow rates are uniform. You need to make enough accurate emitter flow measurements, and this means digging the tape up.

Two types of measurements are needed; pressure measurements and emitter flow rate measurements, the basics of which are described below.

Pressure measurements. Pressure measurements must be made throughout the field to check whether there are pressure differences between emitters. All pressure measurements must be taken in the tape itself – not in PVC, oval hose or lay-flat hose. Locations for pressure measurements are: • At the first hose in each manifold o At the beginning of the tape lateral (upstream end) o At the end of the tape lateral (downstream end(s)) • At the last hose in each manifold o At the beginning of the tape lateral (upstream end) o At the end of the tape lateral (downstream end(s)).

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IRRIGATION AUSTRALIA

The three most common problems with drip tape are wetting patterns that aren’t even, water coming out of holes other than emitters and non uniform water flows from emitters. It is essential to identify the cause as a way of knowing how to rectify the problem. Photo courtesy Toro Australia.

Emitter flow rate measurements. The aim is to determine whether there are differences in flow between emitters that all have the same pressure. Therefore, it is common to take emitter flow rate measurements at a minimum of three locations throughout a field. At each of the three locations, at least 16 individual emitter flows should be measured and recorded. The measurement locations are: • In the middle of a tape lateral (halfway between the tape inlet and the downstream end) near the filter.

• In the middle of a tape lateral in the middle of the field.

• At the end-of-the-end, i.e. the end of the last tape lateral on the last manifold. This is usually where plugging problems show up first.

More information This article was taken from the book, Diagnosing and Avoiding Damage to Drip Tape, published by the Irrigation Association and written by Irrigation Training and Research Center, Cal Poly, SLO. It was downloaded from the Toro microirrigation website http://www.dripirrigation.org/

AUSTRALIAN MADE BSP FITTING RANGE

Australian Made

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www.guyco.com.au

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Australian Owned

STANDARDS

RAISING STANDARDS ADELAIDE HOSTS STANDARDS SUBCOMMITTEE Anne Currey, Irrigation Australia International standards for irrigation equipment and procedures are developed by a subcommittee of the International Standards Organisation (ISO). In a first for Australia, this subcommittee, ISO TC23 SC18 (Technical Committee 23, Subcommittee 18) which has been operating for 29 years, met in Adelaide in October.

“Committee representatives travelled to Australia from Israel, the US, India and Canada, and we also ran an online session to involve the Spanish representatives who couldn’t make it,” said organiser and Australian representative, Jeremy Cape.

The subcommittee isn’t a fly-in affair where members meet for a day or two, rather the work starts on a Monday and ends on a Friday, with a technical tour. In between, there are four long days of intense and painstaking effort going through proposed standards with a fine-tooth comb before they can be approved by members. This process can take several years to complete so being able to stick at a task is key requirement for subcommittee members!

The chair of the subcommittee is Adi Marcu, from the Standards Institute of Israel based in Tel Aviv in Israel. Adi has been testing and evaluating the performance of irrigation equipment for over 25 years.

The testing laboratory in Israel was established over 20 years ago in much the same circumstances as the AITC (Australian Irrigation Technology Centre) in Adelaide in that it was expected to be self sustaining.

According to Adi this was difficult in the early years and companies were initially reluctant to have their equipment tested, but things have gradually changed.

“Now companies know it is a good thing to have their equipment tested, based on standards developed by the subcommittee, as they can use the lab test results and the mark for marketing,” he said.

This independent mark of performance that shows compliance with standards is important to a country that exports 90% of the irrigation equipment it manufactures.

And Adi says that farmers in Israel, who

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IRRIGATION AUSTRALIA

are “very educated”, now know to look and ask for equipment that has been tested.

While Adi was disappointed that the Spanish and French delegations were unable to come to the meeting, he was nevertheless happy with the meeting and with the welcome from the Australian industry.

Standards that were discussed included documents on meters for irrigation supplies, chemigation devices, valves, filters, clogging tests for drippers, testing procedures for laboratories and sprinklers. Standards development follows a well defined path that enables each country that is a member of a committee to comment and participate in standards development. Documents pass through the stages of working drafts, committee drafts, draft international standards and finally published standards. This process can take several years from the time a topic is raised through to completion.

As well SC18 prepares technical reports and reviews the standards it has already prepared on a rotational basis.

Not all topics that are proposed for standardisation proceed to standards development.

and much negotiation to arrive at something that can be agreed to by all.

Having standards is a good thing, but Gregg says that education is crucial and is something that needs to be worked on.

“Products are still largely bought on price rather than being fit for purpose or more efficient. It is up to each country to educate consumers and the market that equipment meeting a standard should be the benchmark for choice, rather than price,” he said.

Moshe Gorny (left), representative from Israel, and Gregg Dill, Canada’s representative. Gregg says he brings a different perspective to the committee as he looks at standards from the perspective of the consumer.

A different perspective on standards One member who has a different perspective from most on the subcommittee is Gregg Dill from Canada. Because Canada doesn’t have an irrigation equipment manufacturing sector, Gregg says he takes a different perspective on standards being discussed.

“I look at things from a consumer end rather than a government or manufacturer’s perspective,” said Gregg. “This means the key question I am interested in answering is ‘what does this mean for the farmer?’” he explained.

Gregg has been on the committee for 15 years and confirmed that longevity and patience are important.

“Developing standards is an evolutionary process. Once a standard is ready to be proposed and registered with the International Standards Organisation, we have three years to develop it,” he explained.

This development phase requires input from member countries

Members sample irrigation in SA As this was the first time many members had been to Australia, Jeremy thought it was important that they sample irrigation in SA, in part to see the differences and similarities with irrigation in other parts of the world.

Jeremy chose two key activities to do this. One was a meeting with the Water Industry Alliance in Adelaide and the other was a technical tour that focussed on one of the strengths of irrigation innovation and manufacturing in Australia – soil moisture sensing.

“The meeting with the Water Industry Alliance was important because it gave manufacturers and policymakers an opportunity to showcase the Australian irrigation industry, and everyone was able to learn a bit more about irrigation in each other’s country,” he said.

The final day’s technical tour, where members visited soil moisture sensing sites in Adelaide and the Barossa, as well as the AITC, was a great hit.

STANDARDS

(l to r) Subcommittee chairman, Adi Marcu, secretary, Helen Atarot, and Australian representative, Jeremy Cape, compare notes on the demonstration of soil moisture sensing equipment by Andrew Skinner from MEA.

Members of SC18 at the AITC in Adelaide. Committee members were impressed with the range of meter tests that have been developed, especially those involving extremes of temperature.

of converting to drip and micro irrigation from flood. The aim is to convert 2 million ha to drip and a million to microsprinkler in the next few years.

With a “good sized” farm being around 2 ha, this means dealing with a lot of individuals and a lot of equipment.

According to Dr Kumar, standards are important, and there are fifteen government testing labs in India testing equipment to Indian standards that have been developed from international standards.

A great success is the verdict At the AITC David Pezzaniti, Chief Engineer, was able to show members some innovative tests being used to support the newly introduced standard for on farm meters. This standard is the first in the world so the tests being used have had to be developed here. Mechanical vibration tests, electro-magnetic interference and dust intrusion tests were among the tests that caused great interest with delegates. The AITC lab, on the Mawson Lakes Campus of the

University of South Australia is likely to be the first registered for carrying out the pattern approval tests for meters in Australia.

The Indian delegation in particular was interested in soil moisture equipment that is simple to monitor and manage. The numbers that are dealt with are dizzying.

According to Dr Ashwani Kumar, 40% of India’s 400 million farm families irrigate, and the government is committed to a programme

All members of the subcommittee were impressed with the welcome they received and their glimpse into the Australian irrigation industry.

According to Helen Atarot, subcommittee secretary, the meeting was a great success, and she thanked Irrigation Australia, the University of South Australia, the Water Industry Alliance and SA Water for their welcome and their support, as well as the AITC, Sentek and MEA. The subcommittee will meet next year in the Golan Heights in Israel.

Choose a New Holland irrigation r rrigation power unit for your farm m Now is the ideal time to visit your local New Holland dealer and select the appropriate New Holland irrigation power unit for your farm. m.

Visit www.newhollanddealers.com.au for the location of your nearest New Holland Dealer.

CNH8842B

Four models are available – SE240, S170, S110 and S85. All feature a covered front radiator thatt is surrounded by a protective shroud as well as a side-mounted, rodent-proof control panel that can be easily removed and remounted to meet \RXU VSHFLÀF UHTXLUHPHQWV

SMART APPROVED WATERMARK

SMART APPROVED WATERMARK SMART WATERMARK PRODUCT OF THE YEAR 2010

FINAL APPLICATION ROUND FOR 2010 The Smart WaterMark independent Technical Expert Panel will be holding its final application round for this year in early December, with a closing date for applications of 26 November. If you have a product or service that saves water you can apply to Smart WaterMark at www.smartwatermark. info. An updated online interface makes it easier to submit an application and allows users to save and return to complete at a future date.

WALKING TO SAVE OUR PRECIOUS WATER

The three finalists in the Smart Approved WaterMark product of the year (l to r): David Carrigan from ANOVApot, Eric Winn from Winn's Water Saver and Eddie Kowca from RainSmart.

The Smart Approved WaterMark Product of the Year Award for 2010 has been awarded to the ANOVApot, which through its unique design saves water.

The independent Technical Expert Panel selected three finalists from products that had been approved by Smart WaterMark over the year.

The Chair of Smart WaterMark’s Independent Expert Panel, Jeremy Cape, said the ANOVApot had scored highly on all criteria for selection for the award – innovation, marketability, sustainability and good design.

“The ANOVApot is a very smart design that the Panel felt had been recognised in the commercial nursery industry.

Its clever design saves water as well as stopping waste of fertiliser and run-off from pots, both of which are common problems. ”The ANOVApot has a central raised drainage system which saves water by allowing water to drain more slowly when compared with the outer holes in traditional pots, reducing water waste through overwatering,” said Jeremy.

The inventor of the ANOVApot, Mal Hunter, said that since being launched in 2005 around 6.6 million pots have been bought by the Australian nursery industry, which has recognised its benefits of root and water control.

“Its integral role of major water savings in the recently developed Twinpot Water Management System is particularly exciting,” said Mal. The other finalists in this year’s awards were Winns Water Saver and RainSmart. A highly commended award was also made to Spray Nozzle Engineering P/L for their Low Flow Mini M-70 Water Saving Trigger Nozzle.

There are now over 230 products and services that have been proven to save water by the Expert Panel and have been approved to use the Smart WaterMark.

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IRRIGATION AUSTRALIA

On Sunday 15 August, Whizzy the Water Drop and Water Saving Ambassador Joel Hurrey walked the Mullum to Bruns Fun run to raise awareness of the importance of water conservation. Whizzy, powered

by Smart WaterMark’s Cally Sheehan, promoted the Walk for Water Campaign: www.walkforwaterbyronbay. org.au supported by WaterAid Australia and Smart WaterMark.

NATIONAL WATER WEEK 2010 Smart WaterMark is proud to have supported National Water Week, from 17-23 October.

National Water Week is an annual awareness week that aims to raise public awareness and improve understanding of water issues in Australia. National Water Week is the only event in Australia that provides a national focus for water issues.

As part of National Water Week 2010 the Australian Water Association launched the National Water Week Ambassador initiative. This new initiative aims to raise community awareness and improve understanding of water issues in Australia and globally. Julian Gray, Smart WaterMark’s CEO, signed up to be a NWW ambassador to work with schools and local communities to improve water literacy.

Visit www.nationalwaterweek.org.au for more information.

REGISTER YOUR INTEREST TODAY The 18th International Botanical Congress is calling for expressions of interest for registration, sponsorship and exhibition.

This international Congress is focusing on the latest developments and best practice in Botanical Science Research. Over 3000 delegates from around the world are expected to attend. This event is held only every 6 years.

Register your interest in attending, sponsoring, exhibiting or presenting at the congress on-line at www.ibc2011.com The Congress website also features up-to-date information on the Scientific Program and Keynote Symposia.

To discuss sponsorship and exhibition opportunities Tel: (02) 9254-5000 and ask for the Sponsorship and Exhibition Manager of the IBC2011 Congress or visit the website for more details.

MELBOURNE AUSTRALIA 2 3 - 3 0 J U L Y 2 0 1 1 Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre

AROUND INDUSTRY

AROUND INDUSTRY IRRIGEAR GROUP CELEBRATES 20 YEARS In August this year members of the Irrigear Stores Group got together in Brisbane to celebrate its 20th anniversary and farewell its departing CEO, Terry O’Connor, who was heading off to pursue new challenges.

Chairman of the group and a member since 1991, Rob Love from Cobram Irrigation in Victoria, charted the group’s growth from when the Irrigear Stores Group was established in 1990 to the successful organisation that it is now.

Rob gave two measures of Irrigear’s growth into Australia’s largest group of independently owned irrigation specialist stores. The first was the first issue of shares in 1991, which totalled $4900; today that figure is $500,000.

The second is that three years ago the group was turning over $300,000; today it is $10.5 million.

Someone who has overseen the development of the Irrigear business was its CEO, Terry O’Connor. Many IAL members would know Terry as a passionate advocate for improving standards and developing the professionalism of the irrigation industry, especially in the retail sector.

Terry said that for the 16 years he had been with the Irrigear Group it had become a big part of his life.

“The group has been in my blood and it’s been a fantastic sixteen years. The Irrigear Group is like a big family,” he said in his farewell speech.

Terry’s role has been taken by Simon Treptow, who had been Business Finance Manager since joining Irrigear in 2007. With this background in the group, Terry knew that he was leaving Irrigear “in good hands”.

Note. This article was written by Anne Currey, who attended the dinner as a guest of Irrigear.

(l to r) Irrigear chairman Rob Love, guest speaker, Steven Bradbury, and Irrigear CEO for 16 years, Terry O’Connor. Steven is famous for winning a winter Olympics gold medal in 2002 in the 1000 m short track speed skating final after his four rivals all collided, tumbled and fell, leaving him to skate alone past the finish line. Steven gave an inspiring after dinner talk about the importance of commitment to a dream and not giving up.

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IRRIGATION AUSTRALIA

RUBICON WATER SECURES AQUASPY DISTRIBUTORSHIP Rubicon Water announced in October that it had secured the Australian master distributorship for AquaSpy products. The deal means Rubicon can now offer integrated irrigation automation solutions from the dam through to the plant root zone.

AquaSpy designs, manufactures and distributes soil moisture sensors, monitoring software and associated radio technology for the irrigation market. The technology provides irrigators with real-time information on plant water use, enabling them to time their irrigations to maximise plant growth and minimise water use.

Rubicon Water is recognised for its unique water control gates, flow meters and automation of irrigation water supply systems. The company is currently automating the Goulburn-Murray Irrigation District, Australia’s largest irrigation district. It has developed the same technology to provide an industrial grade on-farm irrigation automation solution called FarmConnect; the AquaSpy range will closely complement it.

Rubicon Water CEO Bruce Rodgerson said the deal would strengthen the FarmConnect offering and create Australia’s most advanced automated irrigation scheduling and control solution.

According to Rubicon, FarmConnect provides farmers with smart technology that enables dramatic improvements in water use efficiency. With precise plant management and irrigation control, irrigators can produce better quality crops while maximising yield.

FarmConnect achieves these gains by combining a solar-powered wireless farm network with sophisticated software to enable computer monitoring and control of farm devices such as bay outlets, pumps, valves, moisture sensors and weather stations.

By incorporating AquaSpy’s technology into FarmConnect, Rubicon now offers farmers a new kind of irrigation automation – a single, industrial quality end-to-end solution. It also integrates with a wide range of third party devices.

Peter Moller, formerly AquaSpy’s Business Development Manager, will join Rubicon to head up its FarmConnect division. A qualified irrigation agronomist, Peter has a wealth of international irrigation management experience, having worked in the Australian, North and Latin American, Middle East, South African and Southern European markets.

He said the deal is an exciting development for AquaSpy dealers and end users.

“While it is business as usual going forward, the AquaSpy offering will now be backed by Rubicon’s substantial experience in the automation of large-scale irrigation systems as well as their ongoing investment in research and development in this area. We can offer customers the ability to develop their existing systems beyond soil moisture monitoring,” he said.

For more information on FarmConnect contact Peter Moller peter.moller@rubicon.com.au, phone 0418 953 999.

STATE ROUNDUP

NELSON IRRIGATION LAUNCHES NEW WEBSITE Nelson Irrigation Australia has launched a new, user-friendly website that features interactive videos and information on the latest in Nelson irrigation technology.

According to Nelson Irrigation, its website is the perfect starting point for irrigation dealers, contractors and customers. It contains detailed information on the complete range of Nelson products including sprinklers, sprays and rotators, together with essential information on controllers, regulators and valves. Visitors can compare and contrast the capabilities and features of each model through video, action photos and easy to read information. The online equipment specifications provide you with a onestop shop for the important information you need for that challenging irrigation project.

In addition to essential information, the site features innovative video content showing Nelson equipment in action to demonstrate the Nelson difference and inspire. Contractors

and dealers who visit the site can easily source product training manuals through a click of a button, providing key information on programming controllers and installing your Irrigation system.

See the website at www. nelsonirrigation.com.au.

FIERCE COMPETITION FINDS TWO WINNERS IN PHILMAC FOOTY TIPPING Having a solid method but not being afraid to take some risks was the winning combination for AFL fanatic and plumbing expert Ben Mirabella, who just took home the first prize cheque of $500 in the 2010 Philmac Footy Tipping Competition.

The competition, which is open nationally to people from all water related trades, saw more than 1500 people battle it out to secure tipping victory in the AFL, NRL and Super14 codes.

The free personalised stubby holder at registration and weekly dartboard prize give-away helped to increase the

number of tippers again this year to form a serious competition amongst the plumbing and rural trade.

Ben, who had never had much success with footy tipping in the past, said his colleague provided some friendly competition to keep him on form throughout the season.

“A guy I work with is a very good tipper – so he was a strong competitor from the start,” Ben said.

For NRL winner and Queenslander, Brad Keding, it was about using his head and not his heart to finish at the top of the tipping ladder in the NRL division.

“I am stoked to win – my best tip is to always stick with your first tip,” Brad said.

“I was just off the pace most of the season but earned my top place in the final weeks – until I was three clear with only three games left.”

Philmac Marketing Communications contact Tom Summons said the Footy Tipping Competition always inspired friendly competition and had become a much looked forward to event on the industry calendar. In fact, this year a few Philmac employees have given the trade a run for their money.

1(/621 .12: +2: Working together to save water, save energy and do a better job of irrigating.

Nelson Irrigation Corporation of Australia Pty Ltd

Ph: 1300 856 368 | Fax: 1300 856 369 | E: info@nelsonirrigation.com.au | W: www.nelsonirrigation.com.au ROTATORS® / PIVOT SPRINKLERS / ROTORS / MP ROTATOR® / BIG GUNS® / VALVES / CONTROLLERS / SENSORS

BUSINESS

LESS ENERGY, BETTER BUSINESS

Steen Hermansen, from ThinkWater – Dural, has proven that cutting energy use is good for business as well as the environment.

Energy use is never far from the headlines today. Often it seems as though cutting energy use is too hard or is something “the government” must do. One irrigation business owner has proven that taking on the task of cutting energy use can help the bottom line a lot without disadvantaging how the business works.

Steen Hermansen from Think Water - Dural in Sydney explains the benefits of his decision to become involved in the Australian Business Energy Saving

THE IMPORTANCE OF CONSTANT IMPROVEMENT Anne Currey, Irrigation Australia magazine What importance does the manufacturing sector place on developing new technology that brings gains in water use or energy efficiency? Do they think constant improvement it is important or is it OK to continue producing equipment with only incremental improvements?

Mark Gwynne, from Rain Bird, gives his perspective.

The first point Mark makes is that constant improvement is crucial; developing new technologies and applying those technologies to products is the life-blood of the irrigation industry.

This is especially the case as water resources are becoming more and more scarce around the world.

“It has become clear that the most important area for research and development lies in increasing the efficiency with which the world uses

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IRRIGATION AUSTRALIA

Program. He has been won over by the program and thinks other businesses would do worse than becoming involved.

Steen takes up the story.

We are a specialist Irrigation and water related equipment retailer which has been servicing the trade and domestic irrigation markets of the greater Sydney area from our shop in Dural, in the northwestern suburbs.

When we looked at the program we decided that we had to be clear about what our goals would be. For our business we had three goals. The first was, pretty obviously, to save money. If we couldn’t do this there wouldn’t be any use committing to the program.

Related to this was the fact that we wanted to recover any investment we made within 3 years. That was not allowing for increase in electricity prices.

Also important were the goals of improving our employees’ environment and to promote a better retail environment, which would benefit our customers.

We had an energy assessment done that showed our showroom lighting was 40% of our energy use and the office and air conditioner 56%. We concluded that, because we couldn’t do all that much about our office energy use, the key area we needed to focus on was the

water for the purposes of agriculture and landscaping. “ There is no doubt that the benefits of efficiently-grown crops and beautiful, functional landscapes are enormous, but we must achieve those benefits by using as little water as possible, to ensure that there is enough clean water for other important uses as well,” said Mark.

While there is potential for innovation in irrigation technology to improve water efficiency, Mark makes the important point that equipment is only one half of the equation.

“A great deal of water savings can be achieved even without new technologies.

Rain Bird is working hard to ensure that irrigation systems are designed properly, installed per the design, ran properly and maintained. If this goal is achieved, huge amounts of water can be saved each year,” he explained.

Another important part of the equation that is often forgotten is the impact the market – including designers, suppliers and consumers – has on supporting innovation and whatever costs that may involve.

And this is one area that is gradually changing, at least in Australia. According

improvement of our showroom lighting.

The fluorescent lights there were 10 years old and providing a very yellow light.

Replacing our lighting was a pretty big task and we were concerned about lower wattage and how this might affect visibility in the shop. In the end we found out that the lights were cheaper to run, gave a cleaner and crisper light, and we got 20 to 30% more clarity in the shop, enhancing our displays, so in hindsight, it was a very good decision to make.

The table shows the savings we made and our contribution to decreasing greenhouse gas emissions: Energy savings

37,877 kWh

Dollar savings

$6,778 / year

Greenhouse emissions savings

36.7 eCO2 tonnes

Return on investment

21.2 %

For our business being involved in business energy saving program made good sense – from an environmental point of view and, more importantly, for our bottom line.

Note. Greenhouse gas is or emissions are measured as units of carbon dioxide, written as eCO2.

to Mark, the irrigation market in the US has probably hindered the acceptance of new water-saving technologies. In the US the cost of water (and subsequent value of it in most people’s minds) does not put water conservation very high on everyone’s priority list.

“This is different to the situation in Australia, where water scarcity has become a much more visible problem, we see the market being driven by these technologies already,” he said.

When we talk of the market, another potential threat is protecting innovative technology and product from cheap imports.

However, as far as Mark is concerned, while protection of intellectual property is always a concern and Rain Bird takes it very seriously, there haven’t been a lot of “cheap imports” that try to duplicate the most cutting edge technologies, such as smart irrigation controllers.

“Of course, as technologies mature we see more and more competitors trying to learn what we have done for decades.

But, we feel it is our responsibility to stay ahead of these imitators and keep raising the bar when it comes to innovations,” he said.

New Irrigation Tools from the CRCIF For providers of professional irrigation services The Cooperative Research Centre for Irrigation Futures has now finished and is pleased to leave a legacy of knowledge and technology with the following organisations;

EvapCalc 4 -

Commercial package which analyses a range of measured data to accurately calculate seepage and evaporation losses from storages, channels and drains. – Available now via the Cotton Storages Project in the Nthn Murray Darling Basin.

Contact Aquatech Consulting Narrabri and Warren Phone 02 6792 1265 Website www.aquatechconsulting.com.au

SISCO – New generation analysis package for evaluation and optimisation of in-field measurements of surface irrigation events using the Irrimate™ Commercial Service – Available now via Aquatech Consulting Narrabri and Warren for all of Australia and exclusive distribution in the Nthn MDB. Non – exclusive licenses will also be offered for the use of SISCO in other regions in Australia (other than the Nthn MDB) – Contact; Erik Schmidt, NCEA 0746 311 347 schmidte@usq.edu.au

IrriSATSMS –

Satellite and SMS Irrigation Water Management Service – This tool will be transitioned in 2011/12 from a number of current research projects.

National distribution has been assigned to SunRISE21 in Mildura, and they are looking for irrigation agronomists based in regional areas who have the capacity to deliver the tool to groups of growers.

Contact SR21 (03) 5023 7355 www.sunrise21.org.au

Smart Water Metering - LiquiPulse This product will be of most value to auditors of complex piped networks where detailed flow information can provide significant benefits. Water Data Services will be offering the Smart Metering technology to managers and operators of irrigation systems in two forms, a portable auditing tool and a stand alone installed device. Contact George Willcox at WDS, 0407 724 584 George.Willcox@waterdata.com.au

WaterAirSoilPlant –

WASP was developed by Bhakti Devi to provide a transparent mechanism to estimate water requirements for open space irrigation. It is a web based tool which allows peak water requirements to be estimated from 100 years of climatic data. WASP is being offered for commercialisation by UWS Innovation & Consulting. Contact Stephan Golla 02 9685 9853 Email: s.golla@uws.edu.au

PIMS – IrriWATCH –

The Pressurised Irrigation Monitoring System from SEQIF is being made available nationally by WaterBiz, and has been rebadged IrriWATCH. This tool is most commonly used to evaluate the performance of centre pivot and lateral move irrigation machines over the full cycle. A range of devices will be offered and are available based on orders now. Contact Justin Schultz 0427 114 864 justin.schultz@waterbiz.com.au

ICID INSIGHTS

ICID INSIGHTS Willem Vlotman, Vice President ICID and Chairman, Australian Nation Committee of ICID The ICID met this year in the shadow of Mount Merapi volcano in Yogyakarta, Indonesia October 10 – 16, 2010. The scene was beautiful, the meeting very well organised and a credit to INACID, the Indonesian National Committee of the ICID. The organisers found a good blend of work body meetings, technical sessions, cultural shows, short day trips (both technical and tourist), food and ample opportunities for networking.

Facilities were excellent with Wi-Fi available in all meeting rooms, the lobbies, bars, restaurants and hotel rooms.

The Aussie delegation comprised myself, Chris Bennett, Ian Moorhouse, Hector Malano, Brian Davidson, Clarke Ballard and wife Anne, Mohsin Hafeez and Stephen Mills. We were strengthened during the Adelaide2012 promotional

The conference venue, Sheraton Mestika hotel, with Mount Merapi in the background. Mount Merapi is a volcano which erupted after the meeting. Smoke can be seen emerging from the mountain top at least 300 days a year.

events by staff from the Australian Embassy: Rachel Dunstone, First Secretary (Economic), Fleur Hamilton, Second Secretary (Political), Tjut Devi (Austrade) and Swari (student). Devi and Swari were invaluable, for they ran the Aussie Lounge in the exhibition area, while Rachel introduced Adelaide2012 during a networking and press release event.

A heartfelt thank you goes to Devi, Swari and Trevor LeBreton in Sydney, without whom we would not have been able to successfully launch the Adelaide2012 event. Participants present at the Adelaide 2012 promotions received a gold lapel pin with IAL-ICID Adelaide 2012 on it, worth fifty dollars cash when they bring it to Adelaide at registration time in June 2012.

Willem Vlotman at the head table of the International Executive Council (IEC) meeting.

Alan Vidal (left), French National Committee, in discussion with Hector Malano at Adelaide2012 network promotion event.

Entrance to conference venue with ICID/INACID welcome banners.

The IEC head table with President, Secretary General and Vice Presidents (left to right) Italy, Egypt, Japan, Indonesia, President ICID, SG ICID, Ukraine, Australia, Hungary.

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IRRIGATION AUSTRALIA

It’s not all work at ICID. (left to right) Ian Moorhouse, dance performer, Chris Bennett and Willem Vlotman meeting with performers of the Sendratari Ramayana dance group at Prambanan Temple after the farewell dinner on Friday night (photo taken by Tjut Devi).

Meeting highlights A great deal of technical work occurred during the IEC meetings in the first three days of the event. Following are some highlights: • WG-MIS had four presentations, including one from Ian Moorhouse on modernisation at GoulburnMurray Water. The group is planning to complete a special publication on modernisation of irrigation services by 2011 and will hold a workshop at next year’s conference in Tehran.

• WG-ENV held a half-day workshop where the main emphasis was on nutrient management strategies.

• The ASRWG, Asian regional working group and WG-CLIMATE discussed climate change in great detail and Australia has been asked to prepare a case study.

• WG-TRUE and an ICID-wide initiative are looking into revitalising research and knowledge transfer to succeed the IPTRID program at FAO that will close down this year.

• WG-DRG decided on the next two International Drainage Workshop locations and times: the 11th will be held in Cairo, Egypt, 2012 and the 12th in St Petersburg, Russia. A gap analysis of topics will be held before settling on themes for the workshops. The social web based Agricultural Drainage Group on LinkedIn was announced and demonstrated at two meetings.

• One of the conclusions from the 6th Asian Regional Conference on the topic of Improvement of “Irrigation and Drainage Efficiency under the Small Land Holding Conditions” was that up scaling small landholdings to larger companies or organisation will logically occur as a result of economic pressures.

In this context, multi-functionality of water distribution systems is essential for economic viability. It was evident that making agricultural production as efficient as possible was a main driver, rather than ecological considerations.

Nevertheless, it was concluded that there needs to be a balance between ecology and agricultural production.

There will be more details on outcomes from the meeting Backwash and future issues of ICID insights. If you would like more details now, please contact the IAL head office, phone 02 9476 0142, email info@irrigation.org.au.

Acknowledgment: To Ian Moorhouse, for photos.

ICID INSIGHTS

IMPORTANT DATES FOR YOUR DIARY Date

Place and Country

Details

14 - 16 March 2011

Orleans, France

24th ICID European Regional Conference.

Groundwater 2011 DEADLINE for 2 Page PAPERS: 31 October 2010 www.groundwater-2011.net

16 - 20 May 2011

Groningen, The Netherlands

25th ICID European Regional Conference.

Integrated water management for multiple land use in flat coastal areas.

DEADLINE for SUBMISSION of PAPERS: 1 Feb 2011 www.icid2011.nl

15 - 23 Tehran, Iran October 2011

62nd IEC meeting of ICID 21st ICID Congress 8th International Micro-Irrigation Congress DEADLINE for PAPERS: 30 November 2010. www.icid2011.org

23 - 30 June 2012

63rd IEC meeting of ICID 7th Asian Regional Conference IAL 2012 Conference and Exhibition DEADLINE for ABSTRACTS November 2011 www.irrigation.org.au

Adelaide, Australia

October 2012 Antalya, Turkey

64th IEC meeting of ICID 8th Asian Regional Conference E: tucid@dsi.gov.tr

October 2014 Seoul, Korea

65th IEC meeting of ICID 22nd ICID Congress www.icid2014.org

IEC – International Executive Council, annual ICID meeting ICID – International Commission on Irrigation and Drainage, New Delhi, India

ICID HIGHLIGHTS Newly Elected Vice Presidents (2010-2013) Dr Ragab Ragab (United Kingdom) Engr Husnain Ahmad (Pakistan) Chaiwat Prechawit (Thailand)

Winners of WatSave Awards 2010 Technology Award: Dr Keith Weatherhead, Melvyn Kay and Dr Jerry Knox (UK) Innovative Water Management Award: Kobus Harbron (South Africa)

Best Paper Award 2010 Farmers' perceptions and engineering approach in the modernization of a communitymanaged irrigation scheme. A case study from an oasis of the Nefzawa (South of Tunisia) W. Ghazouani, S. Marlet, Mekki and A. Vidal. Volume 58, S3

Yogyakarta Declaration See www.icid.org

WATER INFORMATION SYSTEM FOR WA A new water information system (SWIS) developed by the WA Department of Water (DoW) and funded by the National Water Commission provides a single access point for water information from various agencies.

The aim is provide a national model to integrate physical, chemical, biological, economic and social water parameters. The presentation focused on the models ability to improve the availability of vital water information for resource management, economic development and environmental monitoring.

The SWIS project has two components.

The biological module is integrated with existing state water information systems so that a single query can extract water quantity, quality and biological information. A classification system was developed to standardise how biological information is recorded in the database, which has led to more

useful, accurate and complete analysis.

In 2009, information from this free database was used in over 1,000 private sector projects worth $1.092 billion to the WA economy.

The Water Accounting Data Management module helps DoW manage more than of 13,000 commercial water user licensees.

The new database is value adding to water accounting and water resource management by providing ready access to actual water use figures.

A process also has been developed to create Best Estimate of Abstraction Datasets (BEADs). This combines the new metering database with licensed allocation figures for management areas. BEADs are used for water accounting, groundwater modelling and water allocation planning purposes. With many WA water management areas at, or approaching, full allocation, the project is enabling a more rigorous and accurate understanding of water use across the state.

Don't forget to mark your diaries

IRRIGATION AUSTRALIA CONFERENCE 2011 LAUNCESTON COUNTRY CLUB, TASMANIA 22 TO 25 AUGUST 2011

IRRIGATION AUSTRALIA

49

FEATURE

FLOWMETERING: WHAT STRAIGHT PIPE REQUIREMENTS? Rob Welke, Tallemenco Pty Ltd During Rob’s work with flowmeters with SA Water in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s, he accumulated a lot of experience testing a range of flowmeters used for water supply and irrigation in closed flow. In this article he explores the straight pipe requirement for a range of flowmeters and looks at how a 10 diameter upstream/5 diameter downstream policy will affect real field flowmeter accuracy.

In a previous edition of Irrigation Australia journal (Summer 2009, Vol. 24, No. 04, pages 8 and 9), I described how the Propeller Actuated (PA) flowmeter (see Illustration 1) needed at least twenty-five diameters of upstream pipework to render its accuracy to within +/-5% when used downstream of the most common pipe obstruction, i.e. the 90o bend (see Graph 1).

Illustration 1. Propeller Actuated (P/A) flowmeters are commonly used for irrigation, especially in larger diameter pipes.

Illustration: R Welke.

The accuracy of these meters also diminishes with the area ratio of the propeller diameter to pipe diameter, i.e. as the propeller gets smaller, the accuracy diminishes. Metering accuracy is fully restored with only three diameters of straight pipe with the application of straightening vanes installed between the pipe disturbance and the meter (see Graph 2).

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Graph 1. Propeller Actuated (P/A) flowmeters require at least 25 diameters of upstream straight pipe to meter accurately after a short radius bend, as shown by these test results. Multiple bends upstream require longer lengths of upstream straight pipe. Graph: R Welke All of my SA Water experience showed that if a PA meter is installed after a bend and before established flow occurs, it will usually read slowly.

I have personally tested some of these meters at ten diameters straight pipe and found them to be 20% slow.

It could be argued that these meters are calibrated in the factory or NATA testing facilities with ten diameters of upstream straight pipe. The question then needs to be asked: “after what upstream pipe configuration?”

Unless this meter is installed in the field with that identical upstream pipe disturbance, poor field accuracy will result. The fact is that most facilities calibrate flowmeters with pipe reducers upstream and not bends, plus lots of straight pipe before that, a situation rarely found in the field.

Different flowmeters, different pipe requirements Turbine flowmeters are also axial flowmeters. If the turbine is less than a full bore, as are some irrigation meters, at least twenty-five diameters of straight upstream pipe will be required. Errors of 10 to 15%, usually slow, may result from only ten diameters of upstream straight pipe.

If the turbine is full bore and contains straightening vanes, as most turbine flowmeters do, then typically only three to five diameters of straight pipe upstream is needed. Of course, straightening vanes also trap weed and block the meter!

Hydrometers are turbine flowmeters with a hydraulic control valve built above its turbine (see photo). They have a vertical turbine with a flow conditioning chamber (high density straightening vanes) and do not

Graph 2. Straightening vanes restores accuracy after short radius bend, with as little as 3 diameters of straight pipe. Graph: R Welke

The PA meter is an axial flowmeter, i.e. it has a sensor located centrally in the pipe. This type of flowmeter is calibrated to operate at the centre of a symmetrical velocity profile and, until that is achieved, the propeller will usually be subject to a lower velocity component of the velocity profile.

Hydrometers have conditioning chambers with straightening vanes and require no straight pipe upstream. Photo: ARAD.

FEATURE

Illustration 2. Tangential paddlewheel flowmeter at various pipe diameters. Illustration: R Welke.

require any straight pipe upstream.

Manufacturers openly state this. The Meinecke “Cosmos WSD” flowmeter used in water supply is also in this category. These flowmeters require clean water to stop the straightening vanes blocking.

The Multijet flowmeter is another category of flowmeter that has a builtin flow conditioner and therefore requires no straight upstream pipework. This meter is manufactured usually only up to 50 mm diameter.

Illustration 3. Tangential Paddlewheel flowmeters may require at least 25 and up to 40 diameters of upstream straight pipe to meter accurately after a bend, depending on the vertical alignment of the upstream pipework. Illustration: R Welke.

The tangential paddlewheel flowmeter has a tangential sensing element and is therefore sensitive to the vertical alignment of the upstream pipework. Until established flow has occurred, the meter will read either very slow if the upstream bend is vertically down (see Illustration 2) (as much as 10% slow at ten diameters), or very fast if the upstream bend is vertically up (as much as 10% fast at ten diameters). At least twenty-five and up to forty diameters of straight pipe are necessary to correct this. However, if the upstream bend is horizontal in either direction, at least fifteen diameters of straight pipe would be required to register within +/- 5% accuracy.

Insertion flowmeters (see Illustration 4) are flowmeters with small sensors (either turbine, magnetic or pitot tube) and infer the flow in the entire pipe from a single point measurement.

While most manufacturers are keen to state their velocity measuring accuracy, typically = +/- 1 or 2%, this does not equate to flow rate accuracy. Credible manufacturers like ABB will qualify this and recommend reference to ISO or BS standards for interpreting flow rate from point velocity measurement.

These flowmeters rely on a fully established flow profile to correctly and reliably measure and interpret a flow measurement from a point velocity, even with flow profiling, and this will only occur after at least 25

Illustration 4. Insertion type flowmeters require at least 25 diameters of upstream straight pipe to meter accurately after a bend. Illustration: R Welke.

diameters after a 90 degree bend. Any pipework less than this may likely result in errors of up to 20%.

Conversely, if not enough straight pipe is available, some manufacturers recommend an in-situ verification with another test method of known accuracy to establish flowrate accuracy for an Insertion type flowmeter.

In summary In summary, what all this means is that typical straight pipe requirements for measuring downstream of a 90o bend would be: • PA meter 25 diameters • Turbine, no vanes 25 diameters • Turbine, with vanes 3 diameters • Hydrometer 0 diameters • Multijet 0 diameters • Paddlewheel 15 to 25 diameters • Insertion 25 diameters My next article will examine ultrasonic and magnetic flow meters accuracy.

About the author Rob Welke is a pumping and hydraulics consultant based on the Gold Coast.

For more information on flow metering, go to www.talle.biz/metering.html or contact Rob at rob@talle.biz

Keep up to date with irrigation news and IAL activities... visit www.irrigation.org.au

IRRIGATION AUSTRALIA

51

NEW PRODUCTS AND SERVICES

NEW PRODUCTS AND SERVICES New line of Yanmar pumps and gen sets Selecting a durable, high quality pump or gen set has just become easier with the release of a new line of Yanmar water pumps and generator sets, powered exclusively by the world leading range of Yanmar LN series aircooled diesel engine.

Yanmar’s YDG Series of generators offer exceptional economy with superior power output. The range has three models, the YDG2700N, YDG3700N and YDG5500N, all of which feature a compact power source that delivers steady power with minimum fluctuations.

Yanmar durability and long operation are built into every Yanmar YDG unit.

A single tank of diesel will keep these air-cooled gen sets on the go for 6 to 9 ½ hours. The secret to such long, efficient operation is the low fuel consumption from the micro sized fuel injection system. Yanmar engineers

have succeeded in developing a bushless pump and smaller nozzle.

Output is single phase power delivering 240V AC. Maximum power output ranges from 2.2kVa on the YDG2700N model through to 5.5 on the YDG5500N unit. The units are also capable of battery charging 8.3 amps at 12 volts DC. The same Yanmar L-N series engine which powers the YDG products is also used on the new line of Yanmar YDP pumps. The YDP range is extensive covering both fresh water and semi trash applications.

Pump series range in size from 50 to 100 for all models. The series can handle all types of water from fresh through to muddy sludge.

The internal parts of the pump are reinforced for superior wear resistance.

The semi trash pumps are further strengthened with the addition of liners to the inner casings. The inside of the casings can be cleaned by simply removing a few bolts.

The YDP range has a long operation capability thanks to the large capacity fuel tank. Low noise is also a major strength thanks to the large capacity exhaust silencer. Easy starts are achieved with the recoil starter, and rubber mounts are responsible for low vibration operation.

Power Equipment is the exclusive and authorised Australian, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea and South Pacific Distributor of Yanmar Marine and Industrial diesel engines importing product from Yanmar plants in Japan, Asia, USA and Europe. Power Equipment is also the exclusive authorised Distributor of JCB DieselMax engines for Australia, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea and the South Pacific. Power Equipment also distribute the Yanmar powered MASE diesel marine generators range and Gori high quality folding sailboat propellers.

For more information contact Jeff Fraser, phone 03 9709 8500, Email: jeff.fraser@ powerequipment.com.au

From left: Yanmar YDG 3700E Generator, Yanmar YDG 2700N Generator, Yanmar YDP 30N Pump, Yanmar YDP 40 Pump

Philmac leads the way with third generation compression fitting It’s been 15 years since Philmac launched its compression fitting for metric-sized polyethylene (PE) pipe and now it’s making a name for itself the third time round with the launch of its new generation fitting – 3G Metric.

3G Metric, which was released in August, incorporates years of research and development with cutting-edge manufacturing technology to create a smaller, tougher and faster fitting than ever before.

Dwayne Buckingham, manager of Thinkwater Devonport, used 3G Metric fittings as part of a local government tender to irrigate two local cricket and football grounds, and says he couldn’t

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IRRIGATION AUSTRALIA

have chosen a better product for the job.

“I used 3G exclusively to connect 1400 m of pipe at each oval. There were no leaks, it was easy to install and it offered value for money,” Dwayne said.

“The job needed to be completed in the one month between football and cricket season - and the improvements with 3G made installation easier and helped to ensure I could meet the tight deadline.

After using it in the field we are very confident to sell it to our customers and extremely confident in its longevity.”

Designed to make the task of connecting metric polyethylene pipe easier than ever before, the key benefits

of the new 3G Metric fitting are the use of Philmac’s Slide & Tighten technology, its compact design, simplified disassembly and full compatibility with Phimac Rural.

The range includes straight and reducing joiners, tees, elbows, end connectors and caps ranging from 16 to 63 mm.

And like all Philmac products, 3G Metric promises high performance, UV, chemical and corrosion resistance as a result of the use of advanced thermoplastic materials, offering a 50-year design life and 20-year warranty.

For more information, call Philmac customer service on 1800 755 899.

3 G

ME T R I C ™

Any way you look at it, 3G Metric is the perfect fit. ™

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Connect with the Next Generation.

To find out more about our new 3G Metric fitting, call Philmac customer service on 1800 755 899.

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NEW PRODUCTS AND SERVICES

ITT Lowara introduces new line of stainless steel, vertical multi-stage pumps ITT has enhanced its Lowara range of stainless steel, vertical multi-stage pumps with the introduction of new e-SV™ models. The pumps feature innovative hydraulic design and efficiency characteristics that lower lifecycle costs, increase energy savings and are suited for a wide variety of commercial and industrial applications.

The new hydraulic design provides superior efficiency, and NPSHr levels with the all-stainless steel construction allowing drinking water certification to WRAS, ACS and NSF thus enabling the e-SV™ pump to meet municipalities’ requirements for clean water while providing corrosion resistance.

Innovative design allows for easy installation and reduces maintenance time. The new “O” ring seat allows easy disassembly of the outer sleeve and the mechanical seal can be replaced without removing the motor.

“Environmental and economic conditions are driving the need and demand for more energy-saving,

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IRRIGATION AUSTRALIA

high-performance pumps,” said Chris Jamieson, V.P., global marketing, ITT Residential & Commercial Water. “We designed the new e-SV™ line to be the most energy efficient pump in its class, as well as easy to install and economical to maintain, enabling lower operational and lifecycle costs.”

Other features of the new e-SV™ pumps include: • Superior pump efficiency that allows greater energy savings with lower

kilowatt motors. When combined with ITT’s HydroVar® controller, the e-SV™ pump offers an extra minimum10% savings potential from the previous generation pump, and a ‘green’ system solution.

• e-SV™ pump’s innovative hydraulic design results in lower NPSHr, reducing piping and elevation expenses by over 20%.

• Robust design methods targeting an MTBF of 20,000 hours.

• Expanded pump portfolio allowing pump selection aligned with optimum duty point for greater cost efficiency.

• Impeller axial thrust is minimised, resulting in longer bearing life and use of standard motor configurations.

• Patented i-ALERT™ monitor continually measures vibration to support optimum performance (standard on pumps 7.5kW and above).

Applications include: green building applications requiring high energy efficiency, water supply and pressure boosting, water treatment, light industry, irrigation and farming, heating, ventilation and air-conditioning.

For more information, visit www. lowara.com or www.itt-asia.com

NEW PRODUCTS AND SERVICES

Cost-effective removal of heavy metals with modular water treatment system A cost-effective system for removing heavy metals and other pollutants from various environmental water sources has been developed by Ovivo, formerly AJM/Eimco Water Technologies.

Using a system originally designed for tunnel construction sites, the Ovivo Modular Environmental Water Treatment System is suitable for treating groundwater, construction water, dredging water, stockpile runoff and water from remediation works.

“Simple filtering of the water generated by these activities is no longer sufficient or legally acceptable, especially when reuse of the water is required because of water shortages,” says Mathew Pugh, Regional Sales Manager for Ovivo Australia Pty Ltd. “Full on-site treatment, to remove heavy metals and other contaminants, has become an obligation that can only be met by installation of a professionally-built system. Our proven design provides companies with a low risk investment.”

Ovivo’s treatment system is designed with built-in flexibility to remove a variety of contaminants that may be encountered.

Automatic pH correction is incorporated to allow for specific metal precipitation and to handle high alkalinity water. A range of chemicals and aeration techniques are available for oxidation of metals where necessary.

As the system is modular, it can be expanded later to cater for increased flows.

Ovivo will tailor the treatment process to meet the customer’s final water quality requirements. The treated wastewater may be discharged to the local environment, to sewer, or reused on the site for construction purposes.

Sand filters can be integrated into the plant to allow for water reuse. An integrated sludge dewatering plant is included to minimise sludge volumes and disposal costs, converting the sludge into a form that be easily stockpiled at the site.

Ovivo’s treatment system is mobile and robust. Built in standard twenty-foot shipping containers, the plant can be relocated to other sites once a construction project is completed.

The modular design caters for a range of flow rates. Fixed plants are also available.

The benefits of an Ovivo deployable system for heavy metal removal include: • able to treat 7.5, 15, 22.5 or 30 L per second of instantaneous flow • modular format that allows the capacity of the system to be increased later, if required • containerised design that allows straightforward layout and installation and can be easily relocated to new sites • minimal operator input because the system is fully automated • “site friendly” robust construction, with all work done to Australian Standards.

Ovivo* has extensive know-how in designing and building plants for removal of heavy metals, thus providing its clients with a low-risk investment. * Ovivo, which stands for ‘Water for Life’, was created as a result of the merger earlier this year of Christ Water Technologies (CWT) with EIMCO Water Technologies (EWT) and EWT’s American counterpart, Enviroquip.

For information, contact Mathew Pugh, Regional Sales Manager, phone 02 9542 2366, email mathew.pugh@ovivowater.com, website www.ovivowater.com

More research for Hydrosmart Taking a new direction, Hydrosmart management has decided to do more research into its non chemical water treatment to support the good outcomes being achieved anecdotally by its clients.

The decision is in part the result of the growing need for large-scale agricultural corporations and policymakers to have greater scientific validation into new ways of solving the nation’s growing water issues without using polluting approaches or requiring massive energy such as reverse osmosis.

Hydrosmart has commissioned two new scientific trials which began mid 2010 and will run until mid 2011.

One trial is a plant biology trial where scientists at Suntec NZ Labs are using saline water to grow two lettuce varieties in a controlled hydroponic environment (this eliminates all variables and provides a clear biological comparison ).

They started the winter crop in water at well over ideal salinity for lettuce, being at levels of 4,000 ppm TDS (mimicking poor quality Australian bore water).

As lettuce like sodium levels at about 40 ppm and as sodium was at 1,150 ppm with a combined TDS of no more than 900 ppm, it became swiftly apparent that the two varieties growing in Hydrosmart treated water in winter were able to handle these very high levels, in most cases, right up until harvest time and produce marketable plants. The summer crop is currently underway with the final report to be compiled by end of December 2010. > continued on page 56

IRRIGATION AUSTRALIA

55

NEW PRODUCTS AND SERVICES > continued from page 55

The photos show the different outcomes from using Hydrosmart’s frequencies on this water of well above 4,000 ppm with the same nutrient

solution. The scientists ran a control crop of rain water using no Hydrosmart and Hydrosmart as a no salt comparison control to provide consistent baseline data which will all be provided once the completed report becomes available.

A second trial has been completed and, based on its success, a new calcium carbonate trial run by Professor Bob Moore at Flinders University will begin early November 2010 to assess the dissolution of calcium in water treated using Hydrosmart resonance frequencies.

The report confirmed the increase in particles on the treated tanks where scale forming bicarbonates were found to be

Nelson Irrigation focuses on efficiency Nelson Irrigation Australia is focusing on well designed and efficient irrigation systems in urban and rural Australia and saving valuable resources in the process. In doing this it is saving millions of dollars for irrigators across Australia through complementary individual consultation with farmers and irrigators, in conjunction with professional irrigation dealers.

Nelson pride themselves on not just supplying equipment, but providing expert advice and service. All Nelson area managers have over 20 years experience in the irrigation industry and are committed to working with local irrigators and dealers to ensure every irrigation job is optimised for water and energy conservation and potential returns per megalitre.

Sean Hughes is a Nelson area manager who is a firm believer in the value of this holistic approach. Sean is a 25-year veteran of the Australian irrigation industry and has been working with Nelson to ensure farmers, irrigators and dealers around Queensland and the Northern Territory are getting the most out of their irrigation set up for the past 11 years.

“I recently visited a ginger grower in the Noosa region to recommend solutions for expanding his system for new crop areas. Every property is different, from the topography through to soil texture and structure, water supply and existing irrigation facilities. Optimising an irrigation system is an exact science with many factors to be considered, but if you take the time to get it right, the financial rewards can be significant for owners,” said Sean.

“We spent 2-3 hours looking over their solid set irrigation system, and I took the details back to the Nelson Irrigation

increased and smaller in number which is in accordance with the technologies consistent commercial descaling history in both hot or cold flows and in levels as high as up to 100,000 ppm.

Professor Moore commented that Hydrosmart technology had been shown to have physical effects on the kinetics of mineral precipitation from an aqueous solution. Under the influence of ULF and VLF electromagnetic field modulation, there were more calcium carbonate nuclei (showing as a turbidity increase), and they were smaller, than in untreated control systems.

For information go to www.hydrosmart. com.au

office in Brisbane and had our technicians run uniformity and hydraulic simulations using our proprietary analysis software.

This provided the basis of recommendations for adjustments to pipe arrangements, system configurations and product solutions that would be appropriate.

“The result is significantly increased irrigation efficiency and distribution uniformity meaning healthy ginger crops from more sustainable water and energy inputs. In this case it was a matter of optimising the existing system with minimal financial investment and designing an extension to the system for the new paddock,” said Sean.

Sean isn’t just involved with rural irrigation. He regularly meets with golf course curators and landscape irrigators on the Queensland coast to provide solutions to optimise irrigation systems for maximum results.

Working in partnership with local irrigation dealers to provide user education on irrigation challenges and new technology is a key part of Sean’s role in the community.

“It is imperative that we work with local irrigation dealers in each region to educate irrigators on the key challenges facing their area. Partnering with the dealer enables us to recognise the history of the job and provide valuable information on the issues in that region,” said Sean.

Nelson recently worked with the Australia Government’s MDB ‘Healthy Headwaters’ program in the Texas region, southern Queensland. Extension officers from the program invited Sean to present strategies to enhance centre pivot irrigation system performance at their two day workshop, for 18 -20 participating growers from the region.

For information phone 1300 856 368 or go to website www.nelsonirrigation.com.au

Comdain Infrastructure appoints independent, non-executive director In October, Comdain Infrastructure announced that it had appointed Peter Magarry as an independent, nonexecutive director.

Comdain Infrastructure’s Chairman, Tom Coen, welcomed Peter to the board and said that he was looking forward to his contribution as the company continues to grow and expand the business.

“Peter’s industry experience will add significantly to our organisation, and his addition to the board continues to

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IRRIGATION AUSTRALIA

strengthen our corporate governance arrangements, which are very important to us,” he said.

Peter has more than 40 years of experience working in the electricity and gas industries across eastern Australia. Recent executive positions include Managing Director of Jemena, Acting Chief Executive Officer of Alinta and Chief Operations Officer (COO) of Alinta Ltd. During his time as COO, Peter was responsible for managing the significant growth of the Asset

Management business into an Australiawide business managing electricity and gas infrastructure valued at $13 billion and employing 2,500 people.

He is currently the chairman of Ecogen Holdings Pty Ltd. He holds an Associate Diploma in Electrical Engineering and is a Graduate of the Institute of Company Directors. Peter joins Tom Coen (Chairman), Peter Coen and Russell Zimmerman (CEO) on the Board of Directors of Comdain Infrastructure.

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