THE WIMMERA River water level has been lowered to allow for essential maintenance work in Horsham.
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Horsham Rural City Council technical services director John Martin said crews were doing work at the city’s weir.
“There is about eight bays at the north side of the weir where the gates are controlled electronically,” he said.
“They have a cable component and we needed to do maintenance work on the cables.
“To do that, we needed to take the water pressure off the gates and unfortunately that means lowering the weir pool.”
Mr Martin said as soon as the work was completed, it would be business as usual for the weir.
“The works might already be finished, if not, they certainly will be by the end of the week,” he said.
“Then it is just a matter of flows – hopefully with a little bit of rain at some stage, we will see the water flowing again shortly.
“This is just a temporary lowering of the water.”
Water will also be released from Taylors Lake next month to help the weir pool rise.
Mr Martin said lowering the water level was a routine operation.
“We hope people don’t think it’s because a flood is coming,” he said.
Mr Martin said the works had no adverse effects on the river.
“It is routine maintenance works and it’s a normal thing for weir levels to go up and down,” he said.
“We have never had any adverse advice from the Wimmera Catchment Management Authority that this work effects the river in any way.”
Mr Martin said the last time Horsham Rural City Council did work on the weir was about a year ago.
“We had some damage we had to repair,” he said.
“We only do this work occasionally – it might not be every year, just whenever a problem arises.
“It’s not a frequent occurrence.”