Corangamite Shire Council is pushing for the state government to fund a study into water security - putting the issue on the table as western Victoria edges closer to its drier season on the back of an El Niño declaration in June.
What happened: Councillors voted at Tuesday’s council meeting to respond to the state government’s Western Region Sustainable Water Strategy, released for feedback earlier this month.
The strategy will guide water management across the region for the next 50 years.
What the council wants: The submission’s main request was a funded feasibility study into practical, affordable water security options for the southern Corangamite and Heytesbury areas.
This would involve options like sustainable groundwater access, responsible capture and storage of water runoff on farms, and planning that reflects the municipality’s varying landscapes.
What they said: Councillor Jamie Vogels told the meeting “water security was fundamental to the future of rural communities and agriculture in Corangamite”.
Councillor Nick Cole put the stakes bluntly: “if we don’t have water, we don’t have agriculture, therefore we don’t have any food on the shelves or in the supermarkets for people to buy”.
Why it matters: Agriculture is Corangamite’s largest industry, accounting for more than 30 percent of local employment and roughly $1.2 billion in economic output. The shire is also a nationally significant dairy producer.
West Vic’s drought history: The submission comes a year after the region saw the end of its 18-month drought, creating volatile conditions for western Victorian farmers.
Minimal rainfall through 2024 into 2025 forced farmers to buy in water and hay from other regions and destock their cattle.
The 2024-25 Dairy Farm Monitor Project found average profits across south west Victoria’s dairy farms collapsed 48 percent to $1.26 per kilogram of milk solids, the worst result since 2018-19.
El Niño looms: Adding to the pressure, the Bureau of Meteorology officially declared El Nino on June 16.
Climatologist Andrew Watkins previously told the Brolga the declaration doesn’t guarantee drought, but combined with climate change creates a “double whammy” of warmer Pacific waters that drag rain-bearing clouds away from Australia, locking the country into a drier pattern for around six months.
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