Hundreds of people in Gunning and Dalton are about to be left without water with the Lachlan River reduced to a chain of ponds. Their only relief will come from tankers carting supplies from bores at Crookwell.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
The residents are on level 5 restrictions, which ban all watering, and will soon have no water unless it rains.
The NSW government will subsidise 90 per cent of the cost of at least eight tankers a day - an unprecedented scenario, says Upper Lachlan Shire mayor John Shaw.
As south-eastern Australia enters yet another period of heat - predicted to last into next week - the regional drought is getting worse.
Vince Heffernan, a long-term grazier on the Lachlan River, says unlimited pumping from the river and catchment has magnified the big dry's impact.
''On most of the streams here there are people who will pump a stream dry,'' he said. ''They'll have the pumps running overnight because the streams will stop running during the day. It's what happens when you get to the top of the catchment and it's not regulated.''
District water carters charge $200 to $300 for a 12,000-litre tanker load, plus an hourly rate for long hauls.
The shire's general manager, John Bell, said a $10.8 million reservoir for Gunning and Dalton was nearing completion but rain was needed before it could be used.
Mr Shaw said better land management had resulted in less sand being washed into the river, causing the water shortage.
''The sand profile is not there to hold the water. The system itself has never had a reservoir, it's been whatever has been flowing past the pump station at the time. And there has always been something. But this time, there's just nothing there.''
Mr Heffernan has planted thousands of native trees on Moorlands, the family's fat lamb farm where the river is fenced off from stock. Wildlife flourishes.
In floods, logs rocket down the river scarring branches on centuries-old river red gums 25 metres above the river bed. At present that same bed is a carpet of grey bleached algae and hot sand.
What has left Mr Heffernan more astounded is the aftermath of a national water summit on Melbourne Cup day in 2006, called to prevent Adelaide, at the opposite end of the Murray-Darling Basin, from running dry.
Adelaide's water shortage remedy was like a doctor excising a gangrenous toe and ignoring the remainder of the body in the Murray-Darling Basin, he said.
Mr Heffernan said the government later redirected money to general revenue, and the upper Lachlan catchment was left unregulated, giving people as much water as their pumps could suck.
''A generation ago my father talked of the shearers who would stay in the shearing huts, and shear in that shed and they'd go for a swim, and swim up and down,'' the sixth-generation farmer said before walking up the dry bed.
He does not think sand retention is causing the villages' problems.
The number of rainfall days per year has dropped, the time between falls has increased and amount of rain has been decreasing. This and the relentless pumping were more likely causes, he said.
