LOST a little amid the COVID-19 craziness of the past six weeks has been the fact that Bathurst still has a water problem.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
And it's not a small one.
While the city has been dealing with business closures, movement restrictions and job losses, Chifley Dam has been receiving about the same amount of water each week that the city uses.
It's meant the dam hasn't been going down, but it also hasn't been going up. We're still at around 30 per cent - a perilous position - and there's no flood in the forecast.
For a city that took pride, until recently, in the fact that it didn't need to enforce water restrictions because of the reliability of its dam, that's a startling number.
Council has two water security projects in the planning stage - a stormwater harvesting scheme and a new pipeline from Winburndale Dam to the Water Filtration Plant.
The operative word, however, is "planning".
With the completion of these projects still some time away, each dry week and drop in the dam is going to be keenly felt.
A short-term project at the filtration plant, however, is set to ease the pressure a little on the dam - and, as a consequence, on council.
A new pipeline is connecting the wood stave pipeline from Winburndale Dam to one of the dry lagoons at the plant, meaning about three megalitres a day from Winburndale will be available to be added to the city's supply
(To give that some context, Bathurst households have been averaging total water use of less than 10 megalitres per day in recent times compared with 17 megalitres at the same time of the year in 2019 and 22 megalitres in 2018.)
Mayor Bobby Bourke, when showing the Western Advocate the progress on this project at the plant, acknowledged that people are frustrated by what appears to be slow progress in dealing with the city's water problems.
He stressed there is plenty of work going on - but that work, such as planning, design and dealing with government bodies, is mostly of the behind-the-scenes, unsexy kind.
What thirsty Bathurst needs to see now, it goes without saying, is new water.
And if it's not gushing into Chifley Dam from a swollen Campbells River, three megalitres a day from Winburndale will have to do.
