TAMWORTH council will ask all businesses in the region to cut back on treated water use in the coming months.
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This Monday, Tamworth Regional Council will enforce level five restrictions in the city and a campaign to get personal water use down to 150 litres per day.
While the council has been working with large water consuming operations, smaller businesses are now being asked to cut down.
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"What we are asking businesses to do is target a 30 per cent reduction in their daily consumption, wherever that is possible," water director Bruce Logan said.
He said a number of businesses had been looking at ways to reduce their usage because treated water could become "quite expensive".
The request to small businesses to scale back consumption won't be enforced with fines or any punitive measures.
"I don't know how you would apply mandatory restrictions for business," Mr Logan said.
"Some businesses have identified how they can reduce their water consumption and they're running as efficiently as they can."
However, he said some tougher measures could be enforced if Chaffey Dam's capacity continued to fall.
"The only way we can reduce their consumption further would be to adversely affect the hours they open or how long they run for," he said.
"That's a very big decision and that is something we would contemplate if the dam continues to fall.
"But we are not contemplating that at this stage."
Tamworth residents have been on level 4 restrictions since May which banned all outdoor watering.
The council undertook a large number of patrols to police the restrictions and issue warnings.
Mr Logan said the patrols and public tip-offs lead to three fines being issued.
"Most people, once they are advised about what the right thing to do and the fact they weren't doing the right thing, do the right thing from then on," he said.