General News
16 May, 2025
Weed treatment to begin
With the irrigation season coming to an end, Goulburn-Murray Water (GMW) is set to begin its annual winter weed treatment program.
The program has expanded significantly in recent years, and in 2025 will see the water corporation directly treat close to 300 kilometres of channels for weeds.
GMW will do this using Flumioxazin (Payload), a herbicide it has used since 2021 due to its effectiveness on target weeds and overall low environmental impact.
GMW manager civil and environmental services John Walker said the program has major benefits to irrigators.
“We take different steps to remove aquatic weeds from our channels throughout the year, but often the best results are seen during the winter, when we can dewater channels and apply the herbicide directly on the weeds,” he said.
“We have seen in previous years how this can improve the flowrates of our channels, so we are eager to treat as much of our delivery network as we can.”
GMW announced earlier in the year that during the break between one irrigation finishing on May 15 and the next starting on August 15, it would be undertaking its most comprehensive dewatering campaigns in more than a decade.
Mr Walker said this would complement the aquatic weed treatment campaign.
“While directly treating aquatic weeds with herbicide is the best intervention, exposing them to frost can also be very effective,” he said.
“With both the dewatering campaign and the weed treatment program taking place in the coming months, we will be doing a considerable amount of work to ensure we enter the 2025/26 irrigation season in the best position possible.”
Customers who take water from channels being treated for weeds will be notified by SMS.
According to GMW, not a single fish death has been recorded through its weed treatment program since it began using Flumioxazin in 2021.