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Damning report blames NSW government for water shortages in regional towns

<span>Photograph: Mike Bowers/The Guardian</span>
Photograph: Mike Bowers/The Guardian

A damning new report has laid blame for many western New South Wales regional towns almost running out of water during the drought squarely at the feet of the state government, saying it “has not effectively supported or overseen town water infrastructure planning since at least 2014”.

When Dubbo, Tamworth, Walgett and other western NSW towns had to ration town water – and some even had to truck in drinking water – last summer, there was much finger pointing over who was to blame.

The NSW water minister, Melinda Pavey, blamed Dubbo city council for its dwindling water supply, saying: “The advice that came to my office was that council had not done any work on the $30m for the bore field project announced in June this year.”

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But a report by the auditor general for NSW, Margaret Crawford, said the Department of Planning, Industry and Environment was to blame. The department includes the water portfolio.

“The department does not have a clear regulatory approach and lacks internal procedures and data to guide its support for local water utilities that service around 1.85 million people in regional NSW,” Crawford said.

About a third of the projects from a $1bn fund, the Safe and Secure Water program, established in 2017, had not been allocated transparently and had gone through “alternative processes” other than the ones established by the department.

“These processes were generally used to fast-track announcements and were not consistently documented,” she said.

She also criticised the delays in developing strategic water plans for the state and the regions that were promised years ago.

“The department does not have strategic water plans in place at state and regional levels – a key objective of these is to improve town water for regional communities. The department started a program of regional water planning in 2018, following the NSW government’s commitment to this in 2014,” she said.

“Safe and reliable water and sewer services are essential for community health and wellbeing, environmental protection, and economic productivity.

“In 2019, during intense drought, around 10 regional New South Wales cities or towns were close to ‘zero’ water and others had six to 12 months of supply. In some towns, water quality was declared unsafe,” she said.

Crawford made it clear that the state government, not councils, was to blame.

The department was the regulator for 92 local water utilities (LWUs) and its powers include “approving infrastructure developments and intervening where there are town water risks, or in emergencies”, she said.

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The auditor general added it was the department’s role to assess and co-fund LWUs’ town water infrastructure projects.

She said the Safe and Secure Water program “has lacked a strategic, evidence-based approach to target investments in town water infrastructure”, and had “limited impact” on facilitating local water utilities in their planning for town water supplies.

“Its lack of internal procedures, records and data mean that the department cannot demonstrate it has effectively engaged, guided or supported the LWU sector in integrated water cycle management planning over the past six years.

“Today, less than 10% of the 92 LWUs have a strategy approved by the department.”

Crawford also said the department had no system to monitor water projects or assess whether they were improving town water supplies, though had recently developed a risk-based framework.

The auditor general made seven recommendations to the department, aimed at improving the administration and transparency of its oversight.