BIG Buffalo Dam is an unrealised resource for water security, flood mitigation and tourism opportunities — and the next Victorian government should commit to its construction.
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That’s the call by Australian Country Alliance’s Ovens Valley candidate Julian Fidge, who this week released a policy calling for investment in the 50-year-old project he said had been ignored because it was in a safe Coalition seat.
Murray Valley MP and Nationals’ candidate for the new electorate of Ovens Valley, Tim McCurdy, has this week met representatives from Myrtleford’s Big Buffalo lobby group, who pitched using the dam to secure water for long-term irrigation needs.
Mr McCurdy would not make a call on the dam’s future one way or another, but committed to “keeping the communication lines open” and believed the lobby group’s suggestions “had merit for discussion”.
Land compulsorily acquired in the 1960s for Big Buffalo has laid idle, as subsequent state and federal governments failed to go through with the original plan of turning Lake Buffalo into a multimillion- megalitre storage.
It formerly fell into the abolished state electorate of Benalla but is now part of the new Ovens Valley electorate.
Dr Fidge argued Big Buffalo would be ideal to prevent flooding by holding back large amounts of water and limiting its release into the rivers; would provide better drinking water for Wangaratta; and water security for irrigation of up to 26,300 hectares.
“The Ovens Valley used to be a hive of agricultural activity, and could be again if the government invested in this electorate,” he said.
“The estimated cost is $555 million. Does that sound like a lot? It’s not. The reason the government doesn’t want to build it is because Ovens Valley is such a safe Nationals seat.”
Other benefits could be job and skills creation in its construction and maintenance, tourism, and electricity generation.
“Look at what a dramatic effect the lake at Yarrawonga has had on that area and you can see how much money can be brought in to Myrtleford and Bright by providing a large body of water for aquatic recreation,” Dr Fidge said.
But Mr McCurdy said the area around Lake Buffalo was already under-utilised for tourism, with no camping or caravan parks in the vicinity.
“Certainly a bigger lake would attract tourism but I think they can achieve a lot with what’s there,” he said, adding he was still learning about these options after inheriting the lake from Benalla MP Bill Sykes.
