Mayor Col Murray marks Tamworth milestone as Chaffey Dam hits 100 per cent full

"Casting my mind back 18 months, it's a massive relief to have the storage full. We've waited nearly five years for it to fill, since it was full last time. It's just an enormous relief on the whole organisation," Cr Murray said.

"It's just one of the those things that we know that we don't have to worry about for the immediate future. We can get on with life. It allows us now to focus on the alternative, the other water security measures we need to consider."

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The city was just months away from completely running dry in the depths of the drought.

But with Chaffey dam now at 100 per cent full, Tamworth's water supply is secured for several years.

Cr Murray said the community needs to use the reprieve to seek a permanent solution for water security.

The new Dungowan Dam will provide half-a-dozen additional gigalitres of water for city use, an enormous bonus for a city that drinks just 10 gigalitres in an average year, Cr Murray said.

The council is also investigating reverse osmosis recycling, and has voted to authorise test bores for even more water.

But Cr Murray said it's inevitable the city and the country will one day embrace drinking recycled water.

"At some point of time in the future, in Australia, it's inevitable we will be recycling our own drinking water in some areas. The actual recycled water, in reality can well be more pure than what the town water can be," he said.

"It's a discussion we'll get to over time. As a community I don't believe we or any other community are quite ready for that discussion just yet, but it's inevitable that it'll happen over the next couple of decades.

"I cast my mind back to 10 or 12 years ago when Toowoomba, as a city, went through this whole discussion and right to sort of five minutes to midnight and then the community decided they weren't ready for it. We need to be careful, we need to be conscious of the history of it. But we also need to look at other cities around the world that do rely almost solely on recycled water."

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