CLEAN tap water hasn't always been a given in Manilla.
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Now, a $17 million water supply upgrade has reached the halfway point and promises to deliver.
Tamworth Regional Council mayor Col Murray said it's one of the more significant projects the council has financed.
"This guarantees this town the best quality water indefinitely into the future," he said
"It will take Manilla from where it relied on a water treatment plant that was dated and out-of-date to the most modern and sophisticated water treatment plant we can have.
"It's about the best that money can buy."
The project ensures quality water for Manilla for the next 50 to 80 years and renders the old water treatment plant, built in 1933, obsolete.
The new futuristic plant is automated and will blend water from the Namoi and Manilla rivers.
Shovels hit the ground in March and already a number of key structures have been finished, including the main admin office, switch room, a large workshop and concrete tanks.
In the next three months, sheds, roadways and 50 kilometres of power, instrument and control cables will be installed.
Every drop of water that comes through the facility is reused as much as it can be, TRC water and waste director Bruce Logan said.
"We're reducing the amount of water we are wasting which will improve the security of supply for Manilla," he said.
"Anything we don't use at the works goes into the sewer at the wastewater treatment plant and there's a reuse farm associated with that so it gets watered on the lucern over there."
The project has helped boost the local economy with construction company Leed spending about $6000 a week on accommodation plus the living costs for the 20 staff on site.
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Local contractors and suppliers have been used where possible.
The entire project finished around July next year, and Tamworth MP Kevin Anderson touted it all part of Manilla's "construction boom".
"Not since the original viaduct railway was put in has there been so much interest in construction, industry and technology focused in this area," he said.
"There's a saying that Manilla matters and it does matter to us.
"What they've been calling for for a very long time is clean, consistent water and now they will have that."