Cobar Shire Council’s announcement last week that water restrictions would be lifted completely as of June 1 has been met with trepidation by local residents rather than fanfare.
Mayor Lilliane Brady announced last week that water restrictions would be completely abolished in line with Council’s draft Drought Management Plan.
Cr Brady said with Burrrendong Dam levels now exceeding 20 per cent capacity, water restrictions could be lifted.
Despite some complaining by residents on social media that it was too soon to be lifting water restrictions and they would have been happy if they were eased slightly, Council’s general manager Peter Vlatko said they haven’t received any negative feedback regarding the changes.
“Our community has been very good at saving water and we still want people to be water smart,” Mr Valtko said.
“Our filtration plant currently is only processing 1.6MG of water per day, way below capacity, and we also haven’t needed to pump from our Nyngan storages for some time.”
He said council had lifted water restrictions in line with their Drought Management Plan.
“We are taking the restrictions off and hope the community will still be sensible with their water use,” Mr Vlatko said.
“People are in charge of their water past their meter but we think this is a good opportunity to tidy up the town, and for people to pay a bit more attention to their lawns, gardens and footpaths.
“I’m confident the community can go back to some restrictions if needs be,” he said.
“We’re resilient. Our community has done the right thing throughout the drought and also through the COVOD-19 pandemic.
“We’ve done what needed to be done and Council didn’t have to act like ‘Big Brother’,” he said.
