Top End residents have been told to boil water for eating and drinking after Darwin River Dam stopped operating due to unprecedented flooding of the pump station.<\/p>\n
NT Health issued the boil water alert at 11.20am on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
Residents in the Greater Darwin region were advised to use cooled boiled water or bottled water for drinking, preparing food, preparing baby formula and brushing teeth.<\/p>\n
Darwin is facing the prospect of water restrictions after the Darwin River Dam stopped operating at 4.30pm on Monday due to flooding of the pump station. <\/p>\n
An NT government source said the longer the pump station remained out of action the more the threat of water restrictions became real.<\/p>\n
The public was not notified until 9pm Monday, when Power and Water put out a social media post appealing for residents in the Greater Darwin region to immediately reduce their water use.<\/p>\n
Chief Minister Lia Finocchiaro on Monday morning said the public was told as soon as authorities had fully assessed the damage and worked out what needed to be done.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is not a panic situation, we have tradies and crews on site right now fixing it,\u201d Mrs Finocchiaro told Sky News.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re hoping in the next 24 to 48 hours that it will be resolved.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mrs Finocchiaro said large water users had been told to significantly reduce their usage, while regular Territorians were asked to limit long showers, turn off irrigation systems, and avoid other non-essential uses.<\/p>\n
Additional bore fields at McMinns and Howard East had also been activated \u2013 but they cannot meet the shortfall of the dam being offline.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat this is really about is buying the tradies time to get that gear up and running again, so that we\u2019re back to usual,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Darwin River Dam supplies about 85 per cent of drinking water in the Top End.<\/p>\n
The Darwin River Dam spillway has been overflowing since the new year due to a heavy wet season, and flash flooding on Monday pushed the dam to more than 110 per cent capacity.<\/p>\n
Power and Water said combined with the additional rain, this caused the flooding of the pump station.<\/p>\n
It said the dam wall had not been impacted by this event.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is an unprecedented situation and we have never seen this volume of water in the dam before,\u201d Power and Water said.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur priority is to restore the pump station and associated equipment as quickly as is safely possible and we are investigating operating the dam with generators.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhile we work on fixing the dam, we\u2019re asking Darwin residents to reduce their water use.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Labor Opposition questioned why it took hours before residents were alerted to the dam failure.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is critical infrastructure that supplies water to thousands of homes, hospitals and businesses across the Darwin region,\u201d Opposition Leader Selena Uibo said.<\/p>\n
\u201cTerritorians deserve more than a social media repost, they deserve accountability and clear advice about what this means for the security of their water supply.<\/p>\n
\u201cA situation like this should have been anticipated, and contingency planning should already have been in place to protect critical infrastructure.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf the CLP government cannot manage these compounding emergencies, they should be calling in federal support.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Top End residents have been told to boil water for eating and drinking after Darwin River Dam stopped…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":530180,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[263405,64,63,263411,263409,263410,263404,263403,263414,263399,263407,263400,30376,44,263413,263402,263412,263401,263408,47714,1314,263406,263415],"class_list":["post-530179","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-australia","tag-associated-equipment","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-compounding-emergencies","tag-contingency-planning","tag-dam-being-offline","tag-dam-fault","tag-dam-flood-crisis","tag-dam-operational","tag-government-source","tag-heavy-wet-season","tag-irrigation-systems","tag-lia-finocchiaro","tag-news","tag-non-essential-uses","tag-panic-situation","tag-pump-station","tag-region-residents","tag-selena-uibo","tag-sky-news","tag-social-media","tag-substantial-flooding","tag-water-users"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/530179","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=530179"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/530179\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/530180"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=530179"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=530179"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=530179"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}