Council offering new water carting service for Byron Shire residents

Published on 05 December 2019

Council is providing a new water carting service (12,000L per trip) for Byron Shire residents to ease the increasing demand for tank water supply experienced by the community in recent drought conditions.

“The community came to us about the undersupply of water carting services in the Byron Shire and lengthy times people were waiting for deliveries,” Council’s Director Infrastructure Services, Phil Holloway said.

“People in our rural areas were in desperate and urgent need of water for their tanks that had essentially dried up – which is pretty dire.” “Council has two water carting trucks that it deploys for use during roadworks and we saw an opportunity to repurpose one of the trucks to carry potable water for drinking supply during drought conditions to assist our community,” he said.

“Carrying drinking water is a serious business and you need to meet strict health standards and rules that are set by NSW Health, so we have been going through the process of refitting the truck so that it is safe and approved to be used for this purpose,” he said.

“Offering this service is one way we can assist the community in drought times and while we have had some recent rain, Council sees this as a longer-term way it can help our rural community over what is expected to be a dry summer.

“While we won’t be running it as a commercial enterprise, our fee for service will need to be set to cover our costs,” Mr Holloway said.

Council’s water carting service will operate 7 days a week until the drought breaks.

Bookings can be made by calling the Byron Shire Council Depot on 6685 9319 during office hours.