{"id":2237,"date":"2026-04-30T15:49:21","date_gmt":"2026-04-30T15:49:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/2237\/"},"modified":"2026-04-30T15:49:21","modified_gmt":"2026-04-30T15:49:21","slug":"narrandera-residents-fed-up-with-murky-tap-water","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/2237\/","title":{"rendered":"Narrandera residents fed up with murky tap water"},"content":{"rendered":"

Polly Rombola reckons water quality has been a hot topic of conversation ever since she moved to the southern New South Wales town of Narrandera about 24 years ago.<\/p>\n

When the bore water the town relies on was contaminated by floods in 2022, the situation got worse.<\/p>\n

Four years later, nothing has changed.<\/p>\n

“People are leaving town because of this,” Ms Rombola said.<\/p>\n

“You can smell it on your skin, even if you use scented soap, it smells, and you’re scratching all the time.<\/p>\n

“[Clean water] is a basic human right.”\"Polly<\/p>\n

Polly Rombola is a long-time resident of Narrandera.\u00a0 (ABC Riverina: Rachel Holdsworth.\u00a0)<\/p>\n

According to the Narrandera Shire Council’s website, the discolouration occurs when iron and manganese sediment in the pipes or water mains is stirred up.<\/p>\n

The site says tap water is tested every week “for a vast range of chemical and microbiological particles, ensuring it is safe to drink”.<\/p>\n

The site also offers advice for those whose clothes are stained by discoloured water.<\/p>\n

It says staining caused by iron and manganese is “best removed by an acid-based cleaning agent. Several commercial rust removers work quite well and can be purchased in local supermarkets and hardware stores”.<\/p>\n

\"Photo<\/p>\n

Polly Rombola says she has to test the water before doing her washing in case it stains her whites.\u00a0 (Supplied: Polly Rombola\u00a0)<\/p>\n

Local cafe owner Julie Pearson said the water would typically get to “murky” levels a few times a month.<\/p>\n

“It looks like we have just scooped it out of the Murrumbidgee River,” Ms Pearson said.<\/p>\n

“You can’t drink it.<\/p>\n

“We have a filter that we fill our kettle with, and we buy bottled water, which has doubled in price over the last couple of months.”<\/p>\n

\"Julie<\/p>\n

Julie Pearson says the town’s water issues impact her business and personal life. (ABC Riverina: Nicola Ceccato.\u00a0)<\/p>\n

Ms Pearson said the appliances she used in both her personal and business life were damaged by the water.<\/p>\n

“Irons, washing machines, anything that takes water \u2026 it corrodes inside and rusts them out really quickly,” she said.\"An<\/p>\n

Neville Kschenka hopes the Farrer by-election will spark some action for the town’s decades-long water quality crisis. (ABC Riverina: Nicola Ceccato)<\/p>\n

Narrandera Mayor Neville Kschenka said the decades-long water quality crisis was getting worse, but the council could not afford a treatment plant to fix the problem.<\/p>\n

“Residents are continually asking us what we can do about it, and quite frankly, [we need] about $32 million, and our rate payers just can’t afford that,” he said.<\/p>\n

“We’re looking for support from both levels of government so we can have a water treatment plant.”<\/p>\n

The federal Coalition recently pledged $16 million to support construction of a water treatment plant if it is elected at the 2028 election, but an equivalent state contribution would still be needed.<\/p>\n

‘An interim solution’<\/p>\n

Cr Kschenka said the council had done its best to alleviate the water quality issues.<\/p>\n

“We’ve paid plumbers to install around 450 filters for residents, and we continue to flush the main, but that all costs money, and they’re only temporary measures,” he said.<\/p>\n

The NSW government said last year it would provide $1 million to complete a business case for a water treatment plant, and almost $215,000 to carry out preliminary investigations.<\/p>\n

The state’s water minister, Rose Jackson, said at the time that the government was “in direct contact with council to get a better understanding of what an interim solution could look like”.<\/p>\n

“We are continuing to provide expert advice and technical support to ensure the community is supplied with water that meets Australian Drinking Water Guidelines.”<\/p>\n

\"Steph<\/p>\n

Steph Cooke says there needs to be an “interim solution” for the town’s water crisis, as a funding push continues for a water treatment plant.\u00a0 (ABC Riverina: Rachel Holdsworth.\u00a0)<\/p>\n

But NSW Nationals Member for Cootamundra Steph Cooke said the community should be guaranteed funding to end the town’s ongoing water quality issues, and some temporary relief in the meantime.<\/p>\n

“Now we are at a critical moment where we need to secure the $30 to $32 million to build this plant that this community so desperately needs,” she said.<\/p>\n

“Fund the temporary measures that we have been calling for over 18 months, a temporary water treatment plant to deal with it in the interim until the permanent one is built.”<\/p>\n

\"Cup<\/p>\n

Polly Rombola has documented the discoloured water since she moved to town over two decades ago.\u00a0 (Supplied: Polly Rombola)<\/p>\n

Cr Kschenka said a town that provided “food, fibre and wealth” for the nation deserved cleaner drinking water.<\/p>\n

“We were the town that started irrigation and created all those communities further down the river,” he said.<\/p>\n

“Narrandera deserves some recognition as being very important.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Polly Rombola reckons water quality has been a hot topic of conversation ever since she moved to the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2238,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[22,21,3352,3356,3359,3351,3355,3358,1098,3357,3353,3354,3350,3349],"class_list":["post-2237","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-australia","tag-au","tag-austrlia","tag-council","tag-farrer-by-election","tag-murrumbidgee","tag-narrandera","tag-narrandera-shire-council","tag-neville-kschenka","tag-nsw-government","tag-polly-rombola","tag-rose-jackson","tag-water-funding","tag-water-management","tag-water-quality"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2237","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2237"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2237\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2238"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2237"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2237"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2237"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}