Rural towns running out of drinking water to get relief

It’s arriving by tanker, in bottles, via water coolers and even pipelines — the towns rapidly running out of drinking water are finally set to get some relief. Deliveries will begin this week after The Sunday Telegraph revealed country towns were drying up.

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It’s arriving by tanker, in bottles, via water coolers and even pipelines — the towns rapidly running out of drinking water are finally set to get some relief.

After The Sunday Telegraph revealed last week the country towns drying up in the drought, emergency water deliveries are set to begin from this week.

Bottled water is being trucked into Walgett to be handed out by Vinnies to anyone in need, especially pregnant women and patients with chronic illnesses who can’t stomach salty groundwater.

Walgett switched to bore water after the Barwon and Namoi rivers ran dry in January and while the local treatment plant technically makes the water safe to drink, few residents are willing to drink a glass straight from the tap.

Husky Group Water contractor Mathew Byrne starts to empty 37,000 litres of fresh water into the makeshift Murrurundi reservoir. Picture: Peter Lorimer

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Preparations are also being made to install water coolers around Walgett, so residents can fill up their bottles with cool, fresh water.

And while there’s not enough water in the town to wash ambulances, at least the Walgett Dragons rugby league team and Walgett Rams rugby union team will have a home ground this season after their ovals were watered last week.

Bottled water will also be delivered to residents in Menindee, where more than a million fish died in the Darling River and there is only four more weeks worth of water in the local river system.

Menindee will need to switch to bore water within a month, which threatens to overload the local water treatment plant.

The plant is already under fire for making locals gag from showering in foul-smelling water.

White Cliffs and Wilcannia will also receive bottled water.

The state’s Town Water Supply co-ordinator James McTavish has scrapped plans to reserve bottled water for those with proven medical conditions and will instead make sure the bottled water is freely available to anyone in need.

“We won’t make people provide a prescription for bottled water,” Mr McTavish said.

“If you need bottled water, we’ll support you.”

The NSW Rural Fire Service will roll out two 30,000-litre water tankers at Wilcannia and Bourke, where firefighting hydrants could run dry within 40 days.

The Nationals have also pledged $3.5 million towards knocking down and rebuilding the Wilcannia Water Treatment Plant, although it is also understood the money was already set aside before the government went into caretaker mode.

Country towns are slowly drying up in the severed drought that has crippled the state. Picture: Peter Lorimer

At Tilpa, the town’s population of 44, who live on the Darling River between Wilcannia and Bourke, will meet today to decide where to dig an emergency bore to replace the E.coli-infested water supply.

At Murrurindi, in the Upper Hunter, where locals can’t stand to shower for longer than two minutes because of the chlorine added to treated water, a new water pipeline to Scone is highly fancied to get the green light on Thursday.

Murrurindi’s population of 150, its hospital and aged-care facility all rely on between six and 16 tankers of water delivered from Scone every day to supplement an emergency bore that’s running dry.

In the state’s driest main town Mendooran, 70km northeast of Dubbo, emergency works have been carried out to fix pipes suspected of leaking waste water into the fresh water supply.

Originally published as Rural towns running out of drinking water to get relief