COUNCILLOR John Fry wants a $1 million commitment from Bathurst Regional Council for a wave of residential water tanks across the city.
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Not only does he say a subsidy for the cost of the tanks is needed now, he says it should have been in place for some time.
"We [council] should have done it 20 years ago," he said.
Cr Fry's comments come after Greening Bathurst chair Ashley Bland wrote to council recommending, among other things, council pay for 50 per cent of the cost of the installation of a 10,000 litre residential roof water tank for those who want one.
"If about half the homes in Bathurst had 10,000L of rainwater storage during the 2019 drought year, the total volume captured would have been 80 million litres per month," Mr Bland writes in the letter.
Cr Fry said he would be pushing for council "to put $1 million on the table" for a water tank subsidy scheme out of the NSW Government's Safe and Secure Water Program.
The $1 billion Safe and Secure Water Program is a regional infrastructure co-funding program for water and sewerage projects in regional NSW.
Cr Fry envisages the council scheme would pay for half the cost of the installation of the residential tank.
He said he put his own 10,000 litre tank in four to five months ago and "I probably could have filled it every month" since.
He uses the water for his garden and lawns and says the next phase will to get the tank plumbed into the bathroom and laundry.
Bathurst Regional Council is concentrating on a stormwater harvesting scheme and a pipeline from Winburndale Dam to the Water Filtration Plant as its priority water security projects, but Cr Fry said a number of solutions were needed.
"We need to use every option that we can, not just pick selective options," he said.
