THE WATER Corporation has responded to complaints as Chidlow residents call for a town meeting with the Water Minister, residents and a Water Corporation representative on Monday, February 10.

A Water Corporation spokesperson said crews had been investigating recent reports of low water pressure to some homes in Chidlow.

“In recent weeks, part of this work has involved placing monitoring devices, known as loggers, at strategic locations to measure water pressure at different times of the day and night,” they said.

“Work is ongoing, however, testing completed to date indicates the issue is likely to be intermittent and not widespread.

“We would like to reassure residents we are treating the investigation as a priority.”

Last week, Echo News reported Chidlow residents had made complaints about water outages and drops in pressure during the hottest weeks in the year.

Chidlow resident Russell Cockman said his six-month correspondence with Water Corporation ended in a costly solution at his expense.

“(Water Corporation) basically said it was to do with the pumping cycles for the Goldfields pipeline,” he said.

“We were at a point where we couldn’t even turn on two sprinklers.

“There was back and forth for six months when we did pursue it and ultimately what they suggested was residents install their own water tank and pressure pumps to fix at their own expense the inconsistencies with water pressure.

“At the time, we had just bought a house, had a third child coming and had to hand water the lawn for three hours which was beyond a joke.

“Eventually we bit the bullet and got the tank and pump installed which was thousands of dollars we had to borrow from parents at the time and we’ve been running off that system since.

“Since installing the tank and the pump we noticed our power consumption went up about 20 per cent, and we suggested a reduction on our water rates and asked if there was a grant to help ease the hit of our investment for decent water pressure.

“They weren’t prepared to help in any way with that.”

The Water Corporation spokesperson said they understood low water pressure was disruptive, and to anyone impacted, they sincerely apologised.

“Once complete, data gathered will help determine an appropriate course of action,” they said.

“To support this work, we encourage anyone experiencing low pressure to please phone our customer team on 13 13 75.

“Dedicated case managers are ready to support any customers for whom this has been an ongoing issue.

“We are working with customers to address any known issues and will ensure all residents are kept updated with our findings.”

Mrs Selleck said since escalating her issue she’d been given a dispute manager to liaise with and the operational team did all they could on her property.

The temporary header tank and pump had been installed since its suggestion last week.

Mrs Selleck said Water Corporation were discussing installing a permanent tank and pod to solve their issue for good, but it was not enough.

“That leaves everyone else out of it,” she said.

“That would take the ombudsman away from this issue and we can’t afford that for a community that will only see this get worse and worse as these blocks of land get subdivided into more properties.

“We subdivided my mother’s property in the 80s, and back then there weren’t the properties sitting across from us.”

Mrs Selleck said this was an opportunity for the community, Water Corporation and the government to work together for a way forward.

“We’re aware that a technical report had been submitted detailing the challenges of fixing this issue, but now they should be in a position to provide us some answers and let us know what their proposed solutions are.

“We want to work together to solve this problem, but we can’t do it if we don’t know what challenges they’re dealing with.

“We need more transparency because we don’t know how many are truly affected – we know general areas that are part of our action group but it’s about sharing what the real numbers looks like.

“If Chidlow continues developing and grows with 1000 more people, what’s the impact of that if we do nothing and what’s the solution they’re proposing?

“We’ve extended an invite to the Water Minister and as part of the invite, we’ve said these are the things we want to understand, and we want to give them the opportunity to answer our questions.”

The meeting is to be held at Chidlow Hall at 6pm on February 10.