AVENEL farmers are battling to block the founder of Australia's largest MIS operator building a 400-megalitre dam on a local creek.
Timbercorp chief executive Robert Hance and his business partner, David Muir, have a permit to build and fill the dam on their Tarcombe Ridge wine grape property, near Avenel.
The property has two dams with the capacity of 262 megalitres, but more storage is needed to fully use Tarcombe Ridge's 544-megalitre winter-fill licence.
Goulburn Murray Water's decision to grant the permit has angered locals, who have formed the "Hands Off Hughes Creek" action group to fight the dam.
Group member and livestock producer Paul Bongiorno said the dam threatened to suck the life out of the creek.
"So many people are already taking water out that it can't take any more development," Mr Bongiorno said.
"Another commercial dam of this size is just not sustainable in this fragile catchment.
"The flows have been reduced to the point where the endangered Macquarie Perch is seriously threatened."
The group is asking GMW to halt construction of all dams in the catchment until there is a streamflow management plan.
And it has appealed with the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal to halt the dam.
But Mr Hance said the permit only allowed him to fill the dam from a small diversion weir on the creek's tributary, using an existing winter-fill licence held on the property since 1996.
"I don't think it will have any real impact on the catchment, because we're only talking about winter fill (which bans pumping from November to April)."
Mr Hance said it had taken six years to gain GMW approval to build the dam.
GMW water delivery services manager Ian Moorhouse said the pumping licence was within the catchment's sustainable diversion limit.
