CROPS in the Crossroads and Hopeland districts are up and away in what for some properties was their first ever allocation of irrigation water.
Made available via SunWater from QGC's Kenya Water Treatment Plant since August, the low-cost water will available under contract in a regular monthly allocation for the next 20 years. But there's a catch.
As Hopeland farmer Greg Bender of Burradoo Plains will tell you, you don't know when the water is going to come or how much you're going to get.
Last winter Mr Bender and his wife Maryann developed about 400 hectares of irrigation in readiness for the Kenya water, which they planned to use to grow cotton.
"It was going to start 12 months ago so people rushed to get their infrastructure in place and some of them around here would have spent millions doing that."
But a delay in the plant's construction meant that growers in the Hopeland area didn't get their first water until August.
"That was test water, and then nothing happened in September until the end of the month when we got about 250 megalitres," Mr Bender said.
Based on an annual licence of 4000ML, that amount is about 75 percent of their monthly allocation, and the same is now being delivered to paddocks from the October allocation.
"In early August we were told there was an option of 120pc a month, then about three weeks ago it was going to be 60pc a month, and we could basically bank on that all summer, and the latest is that it will be more like 25 to 40pc," he said.
Another Chinchilla farmer has contacted Queensland Country Life with information that local irrigators in QGC's Beneficial Use Scheme have been told by company officials that they cannot provide the water they have been contracted to supply, leaving many in a bind who had already prepared cotton ground and spent money on sprays, fertiliser and seed.
Mr Bender is now deciding whether to solid plant all 400 hectares to cotton, some of which he has already forward sold, in the hope that the Kenya allocation over the growing season is on the high side of forecasts.
His other options are to skip-row some cotton or plant some sorghum on country he has pre-watered with the Kenya allocation.
"Now I've just got to make up my mind," he said.
Irrigators have a contract with SunWater to take Kenya water, and it includes a clause that says they will be charged for unused water.
Mr Bender hopes that would not be enforced but said full on-farm storages and rain could test the system.
"Some farmers have no on-farm storage at all so I don't know what they're going to do if they can't take the water."
As administrators of the Kenya-to-Chinchilla Weir project, SunWater liaises with the scheme's irrigators, as well as QGC at the supply end.
Mr Bender said he believed QGC needed to improve its flow of information to SunWater about the amount of water that was or was not coming.
"Apparently the plant's going to have a five-week shutdown somewhere along the line. I just hope they don't do it in the middle of summer."
It will doubtless be one of the topics to be discussed at an upcoming QGC/SunWater workshop to bring customers face to face with the suppliers for the first time.
On Friday SunWater advised that QGC had revised down its forecast volumes for November and December.
This was due to high production in September that lowered water inventory, QGC pipeline construction delays and high evaporation.
SunWater is now working to source additional water to supplement supplies at no extra cost to landholders to help them meet their watering requirements.
