Dubbo Regional Council's chief executive officer is alerting the community to the process involved in replacing river water with groundwater if need be.

"Dubbo is one of many end users of the water available from Burrendong Dam and underground aquifers that feed our bore water supplies," Mr McMahon said.

"Just as other water users are subject to allocations of precious ground water, ie river and bore, Dubbo Regional Council too is subject to water allocations.

"Council is working with the state government, the owners and managers of the waterways feeding end users like Dubbo, to function and operate within the allocations.

"We will need to secure additional allocations from groundwater once the river allocation is not available."

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Currently, about 70 per cent of the city's water comes from the river and 30 per cent from seven bores.

In mid-June the state government gave Dubbo Regional Council $30 million to plan and expand its bore field in light of the dramatic drop in water in Burrendong Dam.

On Tuesday, the dam was sitting at 4.6 per cent capacity. WaterNSW has warned the dam may not be a reliable source of water from mid-2020 without significant inflows.

A plan has been developed to keep water flowing into Dubbo from the dam until the bore field project is completed.

It includes the transfer of water from Windamere Dam to Burrendong Dam late this year and the pumping of remnant dam water months later.

Mr McMahon reports that since January the council has been investigating ways to make the city and region "more drought resilient" with the $30 million from the state government enhancing the campaign.

"This has included investigating additional bore options within a number of potential aquifers, water recycling and use of treated effluent to reduce reliance on potable supplies, storm-water harvesting and managed aquifer storage to name a few," he said.

"The difficultly in realising many of these options is not helped by the total absence of useful and sustained rainfall."