Orange residents are being urged to save water when they can, following indications water use is increasing in recent months.
The average amount of water Orange residents are using has risen from around 135 litres per person per day in late July to 170 litres per person per day in late September.
Heading into Summer, Orange City Council is calling on the local community to be careful with every drop.
WATER: Orange’s network of wetlands fed by the stormwater harvesting system will start to supply water to the city again once dam storage levels drop towards 90%
Orange Mayor Jason Hamling said rain in recent months has put Orange’s water supply dams in a good position. Suma Park Dam is at 97.6 per cent of capacity while Spring Creek Dam is at 100 per cent.
“It’s brilliant that a month out from Summer, Orange’s water storage dams are full, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be careful with every drop,” Cr Hamling said.
“As a Council we decided to leave ‘Permanent Water Saving Standards’ in place. The Orange community has found watering every other day is enough to keep a vegie garden or a backyard looking good. That also means that even when water is flowing over the dam wall,
we want to stay in the habit of using water sensibly and sustainably.”
At Orange City Council, a specialist team meets each quarter to look at the weather outlook and current raw water supplies. This team draws on the work of an independent expert consultant to plan how to choose between available sources to deliver the water that’s
needed. That team approves a ‘Decision Support Tool’ document that charts water management for the next three months.
The latest meeting heard that:
- 500 megalitres more water had come into water storage than had been forecast at the start of June.
- The latest weather modelling is predicting dry weather in the coming months, followed by neutral conditions before wetter weather towards the middle of next year.
- If there is dry weather over the Summer, by the start of February next year, storage levels are expected to fall to 90 per cent. Water supply levels are then predicted to fall below 80 per cent by the end of next June.
- If conditions are neutral, instead of dry, in the coming months storage levels should stay above 80 per cent.
Because Suma Park Dam has been overflowing, Orange City Council hasn’t been drawing on stormwater harvesting to supply water.
When water from stormwater harvesting is not added to water storage, it flows into local creeks and on to the Macquarie and Bell Rivers.
It’s expected Council water managers would again call on storm water harvesting as storage levels move towards 90 per cent and preparations have begun to prepare the system to be used again.
In the coming months staff plan to conduct maintenance on the ‘batch ponds’, used to treat and monitor water from the harvesting schemes before it’s added to Suma Park Dam.
Council crews are also using this period to prepare to use the Macquarie pipeline again. Under government regulations, the pipeline can only be used when total storage levels fall below 90 per cent. Crews are planning to do maintenance at the Macquarie River site where the offtake equipment pumps water from the river.
