Water Restrictions
Where Does Cobar's Water Supply Come From
Cobar's Annual Allocation
How Much Water Do You Use?

Water Restrictions

Cobar, Euabalong, Euabalong West and Nymagee

Council revised the water restrictions at its meeting held on Thursday 24 April 2008.  Consequently, the following restrictions have been in place since Friday 25 April 2008.

Cobar’s restrictions are as follows:
•  Hand held hoses are permitted between the hours of 5pm and 10am daily. 
•  All fixed sprinklers, irrigation systems etc, be permitted between 5pm and 10am daily.
•  No car washing be permitted on hard surfaces.

Euabalong and Euabalong West’s restrictions are as follows:
•  All fixed sprinklers, irrigation systems etc, are banned. 
•  Hand held hoses are permitted between the hours of 6pm and 10pm daily. 

Nymagee’s restrictions are as follows:
•  All fixed sprinklers, irrigation systems etc, are banned. 
•  Hand held hoses are permitted between the hours of 6pm and 10pm daily. 

All Cobar Shire residents are requested to comply with the Water Restrictions.  The overall supply of water in NSW is diminishing and the supply for Euabalong and Euabalong West is no exception, which at present is extremely low with the supply dam at 13%.

Council needs to be vigilant in its use of water but this requires the co-operation of everyone.  There will be surveillance of water use and any breaches of the current restrictions will result in further action.

Where Does Cobar's Water Supply Come From?

Cobar Shire Council receives bulk water supply from the Cobar Water Board.  Cobar's raw water comes from Burrendong Dam via the  Macquarie River and Albert Priest Channel, plus  the ground catchment area around the Cobar storages. Water from the Macquarie River is diverted at Warren via a 73km open channel (The Albert Priest Channel) to the Nyngan Weir Pools. From here it is pumped via a pipeline 130km to the Fort Bourke Hill filtration plant where it is either pumped out to the storages as raw water or filtered for potable uses around town.

As you can see, Cobar's water travels a long  distance and is a precious resource that needs to be used carefully. Euabalong village is supplied with non potable water which is pumped directly from the Lachlan River or ground tanks. Mt Hope and Nymagee use water from groundwater storages and potable water is trucked into Nymagee on an ‘as-needs' basis.

Cobar's Annual Allocation

Cobar has a normal town allocation of 1850 megalitres of water a year. In 2007-08 the State Government has reduced this by 15% to 1573 megalitres. Given that 50% of this water is lost in transit, the town of Cobar will receive 786 megalitres of water from Burrendong Dam in 2007-08.

The average water consumption for the town over the last two years has been 1325 megalitres. Our allocation is supplemented with rainfall into the Cobar water storages and in March 2007 water was bought on the open market.

Assuming a population of 5000, in 2007-08 there will be an average of 0.16ML of water available per person, which equates to 431 litres per day.

How Much Water Do You Use?

There are two ways of determining your water usage: 

1. Look at your water bill and divide the average daily consumption figure by the number of people living in your house on a regular basis. 

2. Regularly read your water meter. It reads from left to right with black digits showing the kilolitres (1,000 litres) and red digits showing the single litres used. Record the number on your meter at the same time each day to work out how much water your household is using. Divide this by the number of people in the house and this will give you your average usage per person per day. 

To calculate how much water you use each day Click here