The Tasmanian and Federal Governments are jointly investing $170 million into the Pipeline to Prosperity – Tranche 3 program, with the first five projects proposed in the Don, Northern Midlands, Sassafras Wesley Vale, Tamar and Fingal districts all progressing through the planning and approvals process.
The project at Don is on track for likely approvals in early 2020, with construction to start later in 2020.
Local farmers have also expressed interest exceeding 5,000ML, more than triple t he 1,300ML originally proposed for the proposed Sassafras Wesley-Vale Scheme Augmentation project.
Pipeline to Prosperity is providing farmers in each district with confidence to invest further in growing their businesses.
It is estimated that when fully implemented, the ten Tranche 3 projects could deliver 78,000ML of water to farmers, create 2,600 full-time jobs and increase annual on-farm production by $114 million at the farm gate.
To date, Tasmanian Irrigation has delivered 14 projects as part of Tranche One and Tranche Two construction programs with the final Tranche Two project – the Scottsdale Irrigation Scheme – on track for water to flow in early 2020.
In total, the Tranche One and Tranche Two schemes have the capacity to deliver approximately 100,000ML of high-reliability irrigation water to Tasmanian farmers.
The Tasmanian Government has a plan to grow the farm gate value of Tasmania’s agricultural sector to $10 billion a year by 2050. Tasmania’s agricultural production increased in value in 2017-18 to $1.6 billion, an increase of 9.1 per cent.
