Nundle’s water supply has been shored-up for the next 50 years, come hell or high-water.
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In years gone by, Nundle’s water treatment plant would be turned-off during floods, leaving the town to rely solely on its reservoirs, but that’s now a thing of the past.
This week, the tiny town built on its gold-rush history has been buoyed by Tamworth Regional Council’s $2.3 million upgrade of the water treatment plant, which means there’ll be no need to switch-off in the event of a flood.
Council’s director of water and waste, Bruce Logan, said the $2.3 million investment would secure Nundle’s water for the next 50 years.
“In the last few years, we’d noticed that some of the technology in the plant has got to the end of its life,” Mr Logan said.
“The most recent flood we had it actually inundated the plant and we had to turn it off until the water went down.”
We’d noticed that some of the technology in the plant has got to the end of its life.
- Tamworth Regional Council Water and Waste Director Bruce Logan
The upgraded plant now sits above than the high-water mark of the “one-in-100 year” flood.
“When there was a flood, we had to turn the old plant off because the quality of the water was such that we couldn’t treat it in this plant,” he said.
Mr Logan said the plant would be able to cater for any future government-imposed regulations in relation to water treatment standards.
“The Department of Health are talking about health-based targets instead of mandatory compliance with the Australian Drinking Water Guidelines,” he said.
“We’re confident with the plant we’ve got here, should that we introduced, that we should be able to address those and provide the water that meets those requirements.
“It looks at risk across a few areas, more in-depth monitoring at parts of the treatment process rather than monitoring the water at the end of the process.”
Mayor Col Murray said an upgrade of this scale wouldn’t have been on the agenda prior to the amalgamation of Tamworth Regional Council and it represented one of the biggest investments by council in the region’s smaller towns.
“Things like bridges, water treatment plants, sewerage treatment plants and water supply systems, generally, would not be on the agenda of any council the size of Nundle, without significant state funding and that’s not easy to come by these days,” Cr Murray said.