Last week some work took me out to West Wyalong region and I also looked around Temora – town gardens look fine (I know there has been rain), the water supply at motels (we used two) seemed excellent – no needle sharp shower roses out there – and the motel prop seemed unconcerned about water charges despite being a large user with his laundry.

I find that Goldenfields Water County Council – is the supplier at West Wyalong. Riverina Water County Council handles the larger centres to the south.

You can easily find their fees and charges and other information on their websites.

Unless I have made some mistakes – we in ACT pay almost twice our MIA cousins for most levels of plain domestic supply. Amazing that the small population of Cobar spread over a large dry region – pays less than the ACT for water.

I got ACTEW’s Canberra charges from their webpage.

I would have thought that ACTEW with Canberra’s much larger population, compactly located and dam system put in place a few decades ago, would have had cost advantages over the small populations flung over thousands of square kms, connected by expensive pipelines in central NSW.

The large cost differentials leave me puzzled.

It is not just the money but we all know how we are constantly browbeaten about the need to leave more river flows for downstream users.

I think it is time the ACT Govt stood up to the Feds and NSW by saying along lines – do not bother nagging us about your mad proposals to reduce our consumption more, which has been reducing for years anyway. We will listen more to you when NSW people pay what we do for water.
It just so happened that the Canberra Times ran an article critical of our Govt utility ACTEW on 2 January.