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Wheatbelt Towns Win Bid to Catch Stormwater

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Water

Seven towns in the Wheatbelt will share in $2 million to help capture precious storm water run off. The funding has come from natural resource management group Wheatbelt NRM, through the Department of Agriculture and Food WA and the WA government’s Royalties for Regions program. The shires include York, Northam, Lake Grace, Kulin, Toodyay, Nungarin and Merredin. The funding will be used by shire councils to help build infrastructure to harvest rainwater and then use it on recreational sites within the towns. Wheatbelt NRM’s project officer Don Woodcock said infrastructure included dams, the installation of tanks, drainage and curbing. “Each year hundreds of thousands of litres of good quality water is lost during rainfall events as runoff and evaporation,” Don Woodcock said. “By harvesting this we can then put it to good use on our sporting ovals and recreational areas. “We already know that Wheatbelt towns use on average 50 per cent of their bought water on gardens and parks. “This storm water would then help to replace this expensive, high quality scheme water that is now pumped from Perth to do the job.” Receiving nearly one million dollars in funding through the project was the Shire of Northam. The shire president Steven Pollard said the money would go to its Wundowie Storm Water Harvesting project. “We already use storm water from the Wundowie dam to reticulate ovals in the area, but we now want to increase this to include Bakers Hill,” Steven Pollard said. “A part of the project is fitting a cover to the dam to help stop evaporation. “The extra water will then be piped to Bakers Hill to reticulate the town oval and used to top up water supplies for fire fighting.” Media contact: Don Woodcock, Wheatbelt NRM, 0427 934 112