Thread: Towns forecast to run out of water in NSW .

I think everyone will be pleased if the rain turns up in late Jan 2020. Our Ag department are saying the long range forcast gurus havent predicted much rain until 2021.

To add to the woes for town domestic water supplies, rural folk who are on rain water have generally run out already and are having water trucked in.

Bellingen are installing a portable desalination plant. Assume that's to process the bore water. The Bellingen river catchment is one of the states wettest and most reliable river catchments. Predicted to be dry by early January. Farmers at Casino and Bega will be denied access to water for irrigation to shore up town water supply. The Kyogle Dam inland from Byron dropped from 95% to 33%this year. Haven't seen a forecast for Qld towns, but can't see it being much different. No significant rain until 2021?.............………. Just have to hope they are wrong.

Being local, I get more information about Dubbo, even though I am not on their water supply. Dubbo is not about to run out of water. What is about to happen is that Burrendong Dam, currently at 3% capacity, will run out of water fairly soon unless it rains. But there is probably 100km of river as it winds between Burrendong and Dubbo, and this length of river holds an awful lot of water, even at its current fairly low level, and a fair bit of this is at least potentially accessible for Dubbo. Furhtermore, Dubbo only gets about 20% of its water from the river - the rest is from bores.

Dubbo is currently on level 4 restrictions, but this may be moved to a higher level, since consumption has not dropped as much as anticipated. Maybe needs better enforcement!

Even with the drought, many of these issues are the result of greedy councils and other authorities not providing infrastructure in the good times to provide resources in the poor times.

I lived on the NSW Central coast in the late 80s and we had to pay a special levy on our rates to pay for a new dam to be built in the future - guess what; the dam never happened and the Council kept the money.

Garry

Originally Posted by JDNSW

Being local, I get more information about Dubbo, even though I am not on their water supply. Dubbo is not about to run out of water. What is about to happen is that Burrendong Dam, currently at 3% capacity, will run out of water fairly soon unless it rains. But there is probably 100km of river as it winds between Burrendong and Dubbo, and this length of river holds an awful lot of water, even at its current fairly low level, and a fair bit of this is at least potentially accessible for Dubbo. Furhtermore, Dubbo only gets about 20% of its water from the river - the rest is from bores.

Dubbo is currently on level 4 restrictions, but this may be moved to a higher level, since consumption has not dropped as much as anticipated. Maybe needs better enforcement!

According to the article, Dubbo, Warren, Nyngan and Cobar are still drinking from the Macquarie river after a temporary weir was installed and water diverted to towns. Pumps will drain the dregs from the Burrendong dam which should last until the middle of next year.

Originally Posted by 101RRS

Even with the drought, many of these issues are the result of greedy councils and other authorities not providing infrastructure in the good times to provide resources in the poor times.

I lived on the NSW Central coast in the late 80s and we had to pay a special levy on our rates to pay for a new dam to be built in the future - guess what; the dam never happened and the Council kept the money.

Garry

A similar thing happened in Yass except that the dam wall did get increased and Yass has plenty of water for the foreseeable future. State government would not fund the wall considering it unnecessary in a safe electorate, so now we have a good supply of expensive, hard undrinkable water.....

Regards,
Tote

Originally Posted by Tote

A similar thing happened in Yass except that the dam wall did get increased and Yass has plenty of water for the foreseeable future. State government would not fund the wall considering it unnecessary in a safe electorate, so now we have a good supply of expensive, hard undrinkable water.....

Regards,
Tote

Re engineered solutions, in Orange they recently (in the last few years) increased the dam wall and they ran a pipeline from the Macquarie river into the dam to maintain dammed water levels if below a threshold - ie to try to maintain volume. It was interesting, because at the time there were a group of people absolutely jumping up and down about how it was a total waste of money. They're very very quiet at the moment and I've never seen the place so dry and with such low water levels.

Orange City was also one of the first cities in Australia to directly harvest stormwater into their water supply dam.

Originally Posted by Slunnie

Re engineered solutions, in Orange they recently (in the last few years) increased the dam wall and they ran a pipeline from the Macquarie river into the dam to maintain dammed water levels if below a threshold - ie to try to maintain volume. It was interesting, because at the time there were a group of people absolutely jumping up and down about how it was a total waste of money. They're very very quiet at the moment and I've never seen the place so dry and with such low water levels.