General News
19 June, 2026
Irrigation season now closed
The 2025/26 irrigation season saw the third lowest water deliveries across the Goulburn-Murray Irrigation District (GMID) in the past 10 years.
The season, which came to an end on May 15 2026, saw 79,000 orders processed, resulting in more than 850,000 megalitres of water delivered to private irrigators. The 10-year average is 1,007,000 megalitres.
Dry conditions have seen water levels across Goulburn-Murray Water’s (GMW) storages drop. Inflows to a number of storages have been well below average for the last two water years.
GMW general manager water delivery services Warren Blyth said lower inflows into storages was contributing to a drop in irrigation demand.
“Our customers are continuing to face challenges due to dry and variable conditions” he said.
“Timely rainfall did arrive throughout the 2025/26 season but not at the levels we need for substantial flows into storages.
“Some of our storages, in particular the ones in the Goulburn, Campaspe and Loddon systems, are at 40 percent or lower.
“This combined with other factors such as lower allocations in the Goulburn system and temporary water prices being higher during the 2025/26 season, plus external factors such as increased fertiliser and fuel costs, has seen a drop in the amount of water we’ve delivered across the GMID.”
Despite the challenges presented by ongoing dry conditions, Mr Blyth said GMW was focused on continuing to provide water deliveries to customers in a timely and efficient manner.
“That includes undertaking improvements to our water delivery network, including our channels, pipelines and regulators, during the current Winter Works period,” he said.
“These improvements will help provide more efficient and reliable water delivery to our customers when the 2026/27 irrigation season starts on August 15 2026.”
The 2025/26 season follows a bumper 2024/25 season, when more than 1.4 million megalitres of water was delivered. That season was very dry but followed multiple seasons that were very wet.
That wet weather left many of GMW’s lakes, dams and reservoirs very close to full, meaning plenty of water was available to irrigators when drier conditions arrived.