River Heights: Why the river dropped 40 cms overnight!

As part of its regular maintenance visits to the Wilcannia site the NSW Office of Water discovered that with the current low river levels the water level sensor at Wilcannia was not reading the correct level. Office of Water field staff adjusted the sensor levels and reset the recording device to show the correct level. This resulted in the sudden change in the recorded level at Wilcannia on the 19th of November; the actual water level did not change, it was a change in the recorded value only.  It is standard practice at all sites that these sorts of corrections are made as necessary. The magnitude of the correction relates to some of the issues at the old Wilcannia site and the reasons for moving to a new site.

The Office of Water has been operating a new site at Wilcannia in test mode for a period and took the opportunity during this visit to re-position the water level sensor to a lower and final level so that it measures all flow conditions.

The site is now very close to commissioning, this will occur sometime in mid December.  The South West Hydrographic Coordinator Mr Danny Hannon can be contacted for more details