March rain to lift Macleay's water restrictions

With 191.3mm rainfall recorded during the past month at Kempsey (up to 9am yesterday), river flow in the valley’s main waterway is at 2250 megalitres a day, from 250 megalitres just last week.

The wet start to autumn follows a dry summer (from December 1 to February 28), during which just 178.3mm of rain fell.

Kempsey Shire Council’s Infrastructure Services director Robert Scott said the Level 3 water restrictions, which had been in place since February 11, would be lifted “imminently”.

“There were spits and spats of rain in March,” he said.

“Over the past 10 days we’ve had further rain and we even saw 170mm recorded at Willow Glen, up towards Armidale.

“River flow in the Macleay is up nearly 10 times and the river height is up nearly half a metre since February.

“We’ve had a good end to March and the predictions are for an unsettled April.

“That was similar to what was forecast for March.”

Mr Scott said demand for water supply was below target levels, which had been helped by being out of the peak holiday period.

“We’re keen to work on refilling the (Steuart McIntyre) dam, so we can be in the best position ahead of winter,” he said.

“Hopefully, we’ll see nice average rainfall between now and then too.

“The dam level is just above 60 per cent - it hovered between 80 and 90 per cent in December.

“We’ve tried to refill it on surplus, and now it’s a fairly good opportunity to get it back towards 100 per cent level.”

Mr Scott said the community had responded well generally to the water restrictions.

Those restrictions are likely to be lifted by the end of the week.

The possibility of an El Nino weather system over winter was of concern to the council, Mr Scott said.

An El Nino system produces drier than average conditions.

March’s rainfall was the first above-average monthly total since November.

Those two months were the only ones since May 2013 which were wetter than long-term mean levels.