Armidale Regional council general manager of Business Scot McDonald said water wise residents in Guyra and Armidale should be congratulated for their concentrated effort to reduce water consumption.
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He said the level 5 water restriction target of 160 litres per person per day was now being broken by Armidale residents, whose usage was now down to 135 litres per person per day.
"The communities of Guyra and Armidale have shown that they are willing to take water security seriously," he said.
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"With a couple of steps we've reached targets which looked unachievable six months ago. Now we're beating our levels, we're sitting at around that 135 litres per day.
"That has given us the latitude and the water security to take it out to a year. If we hadn't done that we would have been looking at day zero on probably August or September of this year."
Mr McDonald said that huge outcome was from our community pulling together.
"When I read what's happening in places around us, how some of the other places like Tamworth and wherever have struggled with this, I think part of the reason they've struggled to bring their communities along was they didn't explain it early," he said.
"They didn't explain it early, clearly, succinctly.
"When we started getting those BoM forecast about how the year was going to be we went hard and early and we're seeing the dividends for that."
CEO Susan Law said there was consternation within the community when council lifted water restrictions from level 2 to level 4 in one jump.
"Looking back, it was a very hard decision, but it was an absolutely right decision," she said.
"I remember doing an interview with The Armidale Express when day zero was around October next year.
"Now, we're looking at 12 months from now; that's the difference."
Mr McDonald said there were a lot of tools available, but the short-term action required was working.
"Infrastructure takes time, sometimes years and we weren't in a position to do that," he said.
A public meeting will be held at 6.30pm at Hughes House on Tuesday, January 21 to discuss the present situation and to listen to any ideas the community may wish to put forward.
Mrs Law said the meeting was not a crucial event.
"But it is an important meeting to keep up the good work around reducing and changing water usage behaviour," she said.
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