Drought proofing for two western communities

Posted March 06, 2013 07:11:01

A drought proofing plan to ensure communities on the Lower Lachlan do not have to cart water in dry times, is almost complete.

The Cobar Shire was forced to consider carting water into Euabalong and Euabalong West in 2009.

Four bores have been drilled, using state government money, which will be able to pump 45,000 megalitres a day.

The council's services manager Timothy Wark says the bores will pump water into a reticulation system even when the river is high.

"The bores are going to be set up that once a week they have a certain amount of run time to pump into the main so basically they give us longevity of the pump and infrastructure," he said.

"They just don't sit there and then when you go to need it it's not available, basically that's just so when we go to use them we know they're going to be working because we use them on a weekly basis."

Mr Wark says the bores will provide water to about 350 homes.

"We know that there's up to 45000 kilolitres per day that we can pull from these aquifers.

"While it's not going to be ideal, there's going to be over a couple of hundred litres available per household for basic domestic use, if we do get to the stage where we go through a severe drought."

Topics: drought, water-supply, local-government, euabalong-2877, dubbo-2830, orange-2800