Mr Joyce was in Wagga on Friday and met with representatives from Griffith’s Build More Dams working group on Friday and was presented with a concrete proposal regarding a dam at the site, north of Narrandera.

“Lake Coolah has a capacity as an off-farm storage to, I believe, be easily constructed,” Mr Joyce said.

“What we are doing now is ranking that with other projects and making sure, in the first instance, we have the capacity to get money out for projects to be engineered, to be scoped out, and I don’t think what’s required for Lake Coolah is as extensive as in other areas.”

Advocates for the Lake Coolah proposal, which has been in the pipeline for more than two decades, received a boost this week following news responsibility for water policy was being moved back into the agriculture portfolio.

Mr Joyce, who as Agriculture Minister will oversee water-related decisions, however said the change wouldn’t make things happen overnight.

“We all know water is an incredibly complicated field and I tell you, the first thing I’m going to do is I’m not going to start making wild statements at the start,” he said.

Build More Dams chair Dino Zappacosta said there was a strong need for the Lake Coolah proposal to be built, particularly in light of low water allocations this year which had been a “disaster” for farmers.

“We desperately need more water storages and Lake Coolah is a storage that can be implemented almost immediately – within a year or two,” he said.