WYONG Shire Council has applied to the State Government to take considerably more water from Wyong River a move proposed by The Sun Weekly to help meet the region's water needs.

The council will ask the government to increase its permitted water harvesting from floodwaters in the river from the existing 125 million litres a day to 320 million litres a day.

In September 2006, The Sun Weekly questioned the State Government's stubborn resistance to allowing more floodwater to be taken from the Wyong River.

This newspaper, in a front-page article, said that in the past 16 days of floodwaters in the river (at that time) enough fresh water had flowed past the water pumps on the river to meet the Central Coast's needs for more than a year.

Many thousands of megalitres had gushed from the river and flowed into Tuggerah Lakes.

Much of it ultimately reached the sea instead of local dams.

Once the Mardi to Mangrove Creek Dam pipeline is finished much of the floodwater harvested from the river will be pumped to the Mangrove Creek Dam.

The council's application to increase extraction rates from the river also was identified in the region's WaterPlan 2050.

Council will also apply for a licence to improve the monitoring of water flows over Wyong River weir which will enable a new fishway to be built into the weir to improve fish movements up and down stream.

For more information, phone 4350 1682.