Bathurst Regional Council has again been asked to provide more information before its water security projects can be added to the critical needs list, much to the frustration of councillors.
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In an effort to fast-track approvals, council has been trying for months to get its stormwater harvesting and Winburndale pipeline projects declared in the NSW Government's Water Supply (Critical Needs) Act.
After a meeting with Department of Planning, Industry and Environment's Water Supply (Critical Needs) at Gateway group on Wednesday, council expected to hear back on Friday and was hoping for a favourable response.
Instead, council has been asked to provide further information yet again.
Councillor Warren Aubin has described the frustrating situation as a case of "bureaucratic bungling", which is holding up essential water security projects that are "shovel ready".
"To actually be sitting here waiting for somebody to say 'Yeah, you can start', it seems ridiculous," he said. "I can't see why we aren't allowed to start. I want people to know it's not council holding things up."
He said, as other councillors have stressed, that council and its staff have done everything they possibly can to get these projects ready for construction.
"It's like we're getting pinged for being prepared. You look at Tamworth, they got down to something like 1.5 per cent [in its dam] and then all hell broke loose," Cr Aubin said, adding that Tamworth was put on the list.
"That's not the way we want to do things. We want to do our projects now ... we don't want this whole worrisome thing of we are going to run out of water."
All council can do now is keep following the directions provided, as it would face significant penalties if it tried to start these projects now.
"It's really, really, really frustrating, to the point where I asked 'Can't we just go and do the work?', but I was told we'd be looking at jail time and fines of millions of dollars if we do this without approval," Cr Aubin said.
"We're just dealing with bureaucratic rubbish and they just don't get the message."
