IMMEDIATE changes to water rules for Tamworth users are on hold as the council adopts a wait-and-see approach while the city’s main supply dam continues to edge higher every hour.
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Tamworth Regional Council has decided to tread water on any decision about easing the water restrictions in Tamworth, after its water director, Bruce Logan, argued the council should hold the trigger button to see how high Chaffey Dam might climb in the next week or so.
The council has adopted his suggestion and will sit on the current tight water rules – that outlaw any use of town water whatsoever outside – for perhaps another week.
Mr Logan has won his point on the back of an argument that to change the rules, according to the governing water plan, could confuse too many people.
He said yesterday that if TRC applied the rigid rule, then Tamworth water users could have been faced with two levels of water restrictions being introduced within days of each other – causing widespread confusion for more than 40,000 users on some 19,000 properties connected to the town water supply.
Water supplies for Tamworth, Kootingal and Moonbi passed the levels that trigger an easing in water restrictions, from the current Level 4 rules late last week to Level 3, and the report to the council about those changes was drawn up by Mr Logan this week.
Level 3 means water users can use a handheld hose for just 15 minutes in a two-hour window during the day.
However, since the first new level was met and exceeded, Chaffey Dam has continued to climb ever higher, and late yesterday was continuing to inch towards being 35 per cent full.
That 35 per cent level is the level at which the drought management plan triggers the introduction of Level 2 rules, which allow the use of handheld hoses for two hours a day.
“But, just at the moment, because it’s so close to Level 2, we believe we should hold off from changing restrictions and see if the dam gets over 35 per cent,” Mr Logan said.
“We don’t need much more to just nudge over that 35 mark, and if we hold off, it would be less confusing, rather than have one change one minute and then another change almost straight after.
“We will now wait a week and see what happens.
“If we don’t get above 35 per cent, then we will stay on that Level 3 mark.
“But at Level 2, that means a handheld hose for two hours.
“But we’ve just seen that Tamworth has had the wettest June ever, so I can’t imagine why anyone would want to be wasting water in their garden, even if we do relax the rules.
“We always like to see the dam as full as possible.”
TRC agreed with his reasoning at a briefing on Tuesday night.
The water level of Chaffey Dam has climbed by more than 5 per cent in six days, and at 5pm yesterday was at 34.64 per cent, up more than half of 1 per cent in two days.
Water restrictions at Moonbi, Kootingal and Manilla are also expected to be eased when the review is completed next week and monitoring of their bore and river levels is decided.
