Trangie to Nevertire Scheme

The major intake pump at the Trangie to Nevertire Irrigation Scheme is being screened.(ABC Western Plains: Jessie Davies) Every year 100 million fish are killed by irrigation pumps throughout the Murray Darling Basin — but a simple solution could stop the carnage. Key Points: A single large river pump can kill as many as 12,000 fish a day on the Murray-Darling The deaths negatively impact the environment and irrigators, who are forced to deal with the mess There are calls for screens that prevent the problem to be installed on all irrigation pumps A fish exclusion screen acts as a physical barrier to stop fish being sucked into large pipes and macerated. For the first time in New South Wales, a large screen is being installed on a major pump that feeds 33 farms from the Macquarie River, near Trangie. NSW Department of Primary Industries research scientist Craig Boys said the installation would save hundreds of fish a day.

$500,000 worth of funding will be used to set up irrigation pipeline screens set to benefit irrigators, environmental groups and recreational fishers as well as endangered fish in the region's waterways. The project, which has taken decades to progress to this stage, will erect fish screens over irrigation pipelines that exist along the Murray Darling waterway and is currently constructing fish screens for irrigators in the Trangie and Nevertire areas to benefit from. Senior Fisheries Manager Sam Davis says the project could potentially save millions of fish from being extracted and in many cases destroyed from the region's water. "Fish screens prevent fish from being entrained into our pump irrigation and our water channels," Ms Davis said. "Those fish who are extracted are completely lost to the local ecosystem, they will never get to return, we lose all their genetic input and we can't get it back." "Our scientists have worked at quantifying how many fish are lost, and at our best estimate, millions of fish are lost in these water systems every year."