Warrumbungle Shire Council is the local water utility that supplies water to the township of Coolah via the Coolah Water Supply Scheme. Raw water is sourced from a bore field located at the Coolah Town Wells, which is located on Town Wells Road, Coolah. Water is then treated at the site before being pumped via a 4.5km rising main to the town reservoir prior to distribution.

This rising main crosses the Coolaburragundy River, the alignment at this point sits on the invert of the riverbed and is concrete encased. In the event of an extreme flood event, the current river crossing design poses a high risk of potential failure due to flooding forces. A failure of the rising main at this location would result in a severe unplanned water outage that would likely result in the existing township running out of water for a number of days.

To proactively manage this risk and ensure the continuity of supply to the Coolah Water Supply Scheme, Council is proposing to under bore the Coolaburragundy River in a close offset to the existing crossings horizontal alignment to secure resilience to the existing critical pipeline asset.