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Rainfall boosts Macquarie Marshes

Tuesday February 9, 2010 - 10:10 EDT

Recent heavy rainfall will provide significant inflows of water to the Macquarie Marshes near Warren, in central NSW, State Water says.

The manual rain gauge at the Dubbo Airport recorded 154 millimetres between Friday afternoon and Saturday morning.

Tony Webber from State Water says the falls will provide a boost to the wetlands.

"The good news is downstream from Dubbo tributaries are boosting levels in the Macquarie such that there should be very beneficial flows to the Macquarie Marshes which is timely follow up from the flows that it received around Christmas boxing day."

However, Mr Webber says 78 millimetres recorded at Wellington has failed to boost Burrendong Dam's capacity.

"Unfortunately in the Central West the impacts have been pretty minimal. The falls while they were out in western New South Wales didn't occur in the catchments for Windamere, Wyangala or Burrendong in anything like the quantities needed to make a difference to those storages."

Burrendong dam is at 10.5 per cent capacity, the level of Wyangala dam near Cowra has fallen slightly to 5.3 per cent and Windamere dam near Mudgee remains at 18.6 per cent.

- ABC

© ABC 2010