To all shareholders

We understand the significance of the current water supply situation and apologise for the impacts you are currently experiencing.

Unfortunately there have been a number of recent misleading reports laying the blame for the shortage squarely at the feet of our company. This is not the case. The sequence of events that have led to this shortage are outlined below:

MI makes forecasts of water demand 7 days in advance for the Sturt canal system and 5 days in advance for Main Canal system. State Water makes releases from the Dams according to forecasts by MI and other users on the river.

Within MI about 95% of orders are placed on 1 days notice, and so there is a chance of mismatch in times of rapid change in irrigator demand.

The 7 day forecasts from MI on Monday 14th November were conservative due to a range of factors including high levels of buffer supplies held in our system, and the advice we had received from irrigator representatives about their expectations of demands.

From the 15th of November (10 days ago) we started advising State Water of our concerns with increasing demand. Later in the week we began making requests for additional releases of water above our forecasts, whilst we used our buffer supplies to meet rising demand.

We originally believed that minor restrictions over the period from Saturday 19th to Monday 21st would have been the outcome if State Water had made the releases we expected.

For reasons we are yet to understand fully, State Water did not respond as we expected to these amended forecasts - they did not release additional flows despite our requests. At the same time, a malfunctioning gate at Gogeldrie Weir, which is operated by State Water, resulted in a loss of 1200ML from the weir pool. As a result, the restrictions have been severe over at least a 10-day period.

Our staff have been working tirelessly to try and manage the demands and every attempt is being made to share the restrictions fairly.

We are hopeful that water supply will be returned to normal supply this weekend but we remain at the mercy of flows arriving at our offtakes from State Water.

I thank you for your continuing patience and ask you to bear with us until that time.

John Chant
Chief Executive