Water supply and quality
Lismore City Council provides drinking water in the following areas:
- Lismore
- Nimbin
- Caniaba
- Dunoon
- The Channon
- Modanville
- Tullera
- Clunes
- North Woodburn
Most of our drinking water is supplied by Rous County Council, who treat water from Rocky Creek Dam at their Nightcap Water Treatment Plant. Some places like Richmond Hill are even supplied with their drinking water directly from Rous County Council. However, the drinking water in Nimbin is managed entirely by Lismore City Council.
For more information on Rocky Creek Dam and Rous County Council’s water treatment processes, please visit their website.
Nimbin water supply
Water in Nimbin is extracted from Mulgum Creek via the Mulgum Creek Weir, and then is chlorinated to kill harmful viruses and bacteria.
Chlorinated water is then piped to the D. E. Williams Dam for storage. Nimbin Rural customers also receive their water from this pipe. The D. E. Williams Dam holds about 25 million litres of water, which can keep the village of Nimbin supplied for at least two months.
When the village of Nimbin needs drinking water, it is extracted from the D. E. Williams Dam, filtered by the Nimbin Temporary Water Treatment Plant, topped up with chlorine and then pumped up to the Nimbin High St Reservoir for distribution.
Chlorination of drinking water in Nimbin
We use sodium hypochlorite to add low levels (less than 5 parts per million) of chlorine to the drinking water in Nimbin. These levels are harmless to humans, but very effective at killing harmful viruses and bacteria. This helps prevent diseases from spreading through our drinking water, keeping everyone safe, happy and healthy.
For more information on other treatment processes used on water in our Rous County Council supplied areas, including fluoridation, please refer to Rous County Council’s website.
Drinking water quality
Lismore City Council participates in NSW Health’s Drinking Water Monitoring Program. Under this program, we routinely collect samples from across our network, and test them for a suite of water quality parameters. The results from these tests are reported to NSW Health. We also run a weekly operational monitoring program to ensure that key parameters remain within safe limits.
The results from these two programs for 2024 are summarised in our 2024 Drinking Water Monitoring Report.