Douglas Daly Hot Springs are set to close tomorrow following “significant water issues”

Douglas Daly Hot Springs are set to close on Thursday for an extended period.

The Douglas Daly Hot Springs will close on Thursday after significant issues on the water supply to the toilet block. Picture: Justin Kennedy

Douglas Daly Hot Springs are set to close on Thursday for at least a month after “significant water issues” have seen a lack of water going to the bathroom block.

Top End Parks chief district ranger Julie Heron told Mix 104.9 the natural water level had dropped below the level where the bore can naturally pump it into the system.

“It’s a spring fed bore system and there’s no water tank as such … toilets can’t operate and bore levels unable to cope with the water flow,” she said.

“The amount of people down there and without water the hygienic box will get fairly unhygienic and disgusting pretty quickly.”

Ms Heron said the tourist attraction would be closed until the problem was fixed which could take months.

“I don’t think there’s a short term solution, it might take a month or so to work out how we’ll go about fixing the problem,” she said.

“We definitely did not want to close areas, especially not in the tourist season, there were just no other options at the end of the day.”

Ms Heron said the water system had been playing up for a number of weeks and Top End Parks had been doing what they could to avoid closing down.

“The water’s been having problems for a couple of weeks and we’ve just done some trouble shooting as best as we can to see whether it could have been caused by something else such as leaks … but it’s definitely the water table,” she said.

“We’ll be getting down a hydrologist an expert to see what we can do.”

Plans of repairing the system could include the installation of a solar pump or introducing storage tanks.

“We have to find the best way of getting the water back on, I’m not sure what that will entail, whether it’s some sort of installation of a solar pump, better tanks, something like that I imagine is what we’ll look at.