A crusade by a group of Great Southern farmers to “save” Lake Biddy dam has ended in joy, with work to bring the site back into action finishing just in time to capture recent rains.
For a couple of years, the dam north of Newdegate has been bypassed by farmers desperate for water during some of their driest seasons.
It was hard for local farmer Ashley McDonald to watch.
“It hasn’t been used in about two years, the silt level got that high that it would all be evaporated by harvest,” he said.
My whole family have talked about it — because I’ve lived here all my life, I know what it’s capable of and how much water it can hold — it was just such a waste.
“We’d see trucks going past going into Newdegate carting scheme water. There’s no scheme north of us, so everyone north had to cart stock water.”
With other farmers backing him, he presented a case for the dam to Shire of Lake Grace president Len Armstrong, who “saw its potential”.
Previously a Water Corporation dam, the Shire was required to take it over, and has since taken over five of the corporation’s dams which it will upgrade.
Being the size it was, Lake Biddy dam was prioritised and the Shire received $100,000 from the Department of Water and Environmental Regulation, $50,000 from the Federal Government’s Drought Communities Fund and contributed a further $30,000 for its upgrades.
Last August the Shire, Mr McDonald and local contractors began the mammoth task of silting, which had not been done in 40 years. They not only silted the main dam, but the smaller one adjoining it.
“There was a lot of mud there,” he laughed. “The scoop would just disappear.”
As well as silting, they graded catchments, doubled it to 30,000 cubic metres and installed solar panels and a new, 250,000-litre water tank.
When all the work wrapped up, something amazing happened — it rained more than it had in decades, transforming the dam, which had fallen into disuse, into a secure water supply for seasons to come.
“It’s about to overflow,” Mr McDonald said. “We virtually finished silting the second one the weekend it rained.
The significance of this site is that it’s got such a big catchment area so that’s the secret — there’s no point having a great big dam with no catchment.
Shire chief executive Alan George said it was “very satisfying” to see the dam full after such a dry few years.
The Shire was declared water deficient in December 2019, with the area so dry that they drained the local swimming pool for emergency water.
“Things were getting pretty dire,” Mr George said.
“We were down to our last dam to water the footy oval.
Everyone was carting water towards the end — I gave away the 1.6 million litres in the swimming pool this time last year.
He said he was thankful for the DWER funding and the Shire would start work on the remaining dams it had taken over as funding became available.
Mr McDonald was “really pleased” with the Shire’s assistance and thanked them — in particular Mr Armstrong, Mr George and works manager Craig Elefsen — for their support.
“Over the years I've been really cynical about the Shire ... but I’ll eat my words because these guys really did a good job,” he said.
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