A MEETING aimed at finding ways to cope with the ongoing water shortage issues facing parts of the southern Wheatbelt and Great Southern areas will be held in Lake Grace on Monday.
WAFarmers is organising the meeting with Parliamentary Secretary to the Agriculture and Food Minister Darren West attending on behalf of the State government.
Last week WAFarmers called on the government to audit water infrastructure and planning in the lower rainfall areas.
Long time WAFarmers Corrigin/Lake Grace zone member Bob Iffla will chair the meeting and said it was time to do something about the water situation in the area.
"It is getting critical now, the lack of water around the place is unreal," Mr Iffla said.
"People are spending quite a few hours a day just filling up tanks from standpipes.
"It is getting really bad.
"If it doesn't rain soon, a lot of farmers have enough water for another 10 weeks by transferring water from one dam to another and so on, but a lot of people are also starting to use the public system more.
"What we need to do is get a lot of water into the area fairly quickly, so if it doesn't rain straight away we are half organised."
WAFarmers chief executive officer Trevor Whittington told ABC radio last week that senior ministers should personally visit affected communities to better understand the region's water crisis.
"We would like to see the State government show awareness that we've got a real crisis in that part of the world," Mr Whittington said.
Mr Whittington said the State government's water infrastructure and planning had fallen short.
Mr West said due to parliament sitting Water Minister Dave Kelly and Agriculture and Food Minister Alannah MacTiernan would not be able to attend the meeting, but he would be there to represent the government.
"I will go and find out what the community wants from us," Mr West said.
"Until we get rain, from what I understand we will have to manage the situation that is before us.
"This meeting is about talking to the community and finding out exactly what is occurring and trying to do something about it.
"There seems to be some issues with Water Corporation dams out there, which I need to find out about.
"Apparently Water Corp is saying that those dams can be handed over to the shires but there has been some delays there so I will see if there is a way we can make that transition a bit faster."
Mr West said relying on rainfall in a changing climate, meant communities would need to find a different way to have a more reliable water supply.
"In the short-term we are going to have to manage the situation as best we can and sadly it is going to mean there will be some disruption to the standpipe service from time to time, in the medium-term we need to look at how we reduce the flow on those so they don't have such a big affect further down the line," he said.
"Essentially if we are all just going to have water on demand, the system isn't keeping up in times like this."
Member for Roe Peter Rundle said he was still searching for answers as to why the Water Corporation cut off supply to critical standpipes in the Lake Grace and Kulin areas during periods of high demand back in January.
He also said the Water Corporation could fix nearby dams and surface water catchments to make sure water users in the area had access to back-up surface supply in the case of future shortages to standpipes connected to scheme.
"There was talk of filling in Water Corporation dams in these areas but to me, they should be improving them, cleaning them out and improving the catchments," Mr Rundle said.
"I am just trying to get to the bottom of why this is occurring and at this time of year the last thing you want to do is talk about filling dams in.
"I know they want to offload them to local government to look after them, but that is not the way to go."
Mr Rundle said the removal of the Farm Water Rebate Scheme wasn't helping the current situation, as this scheme was aimed at farmers having less reliance on the scheme water.
"Until the McGowan government came to power, the rebate scheme alone invested $36 million over more than 20 years to improving water efficiencies and addressing deficiency on 4000 farms," he said.
In parliament last week Mr Rundle asked Water Minister Dave Kelly if he could explain why the Water Corporation cut off supply to these standpipes.
"The practice of Water Corporation turning off supply to standpipes jeopardises the ability of producers to collect emergency water for stock and firefighting purposes," he said.
"When asked, the minister failed to explain how this situation occurred and was unable to guarantee that it wouldn't happen again."
But Mr West said there was more information that needed to be looked at so the government could work towards a solution.
"The first contact I have had on this issue is when Bob Iffla rang to ask me to attend this meeting, no shires had been in touch," he said.
"We are keen to work towards managing this situation and this meeting will be a good starting point for that."
