Narrabri’s beleaguered town water supply has been given a major boost with the official switching on of the new Elizabeth Street bore yesterday.
The commissioning of the new bore has been a long awaited event, with residents’ recent memories of summer water shortages and town bore break downs fresh. However, the new bore is delivering top quality water and lots of it, the director of engineering services, Mr Andre Kompler announced at Tuesday’s council meeting.
Mr Kompler brought a water sample to the meeting for a ‘taste test'.
It has no taste, is free of iron and precipitants, and an earlier issue with hydrogen sulphide had been overcome after running the pump for a while.
Councillors tasted the water and confirmed it was very good quality.
“The new bore is now on line” Mr Kompler said. “It will pump 70 to 80 litres per second, the same as the other bores when they operate at full capacity.”
The new bore provided the water system with extra capacity and redundancy Mr Kompler said.
It will allow a maintenance program for the other bores when needed without impacting heavily on the town supply.
The planned Narrabri water supply augmentation scheme, now in the design and planning stage, will ultimately also provide for two more new bores, allowing more back up.
The extra capacity is good news for Narrabri residents who have seen the town supply curtailed by bore failures in peak summer demand times. The old Elizabeth street bore, was operating at about 30 litres per second.
The new bore was one step in the process to achieving a water supply which not only delivered quantity, but also quality, Mr Kompler said.
Any money left over from the water supply augmentation scheme will be earmarked to improve water quality in the existing town system, Mr Kompler said.