Dubbo mayor Matthew Dickerson says council taking a different approach to Wellington fluoridation fail

The failure comes as Dubbo's water supply remains un-fluoridated following the discovery last year that council had - unbeknownst to the public - not been fluoridating the local water supply for the past three-and-half years.

"The approach that we're taking this time is dramatically different to the last time something like this occurred and the first thing we did is obviously tell the community and let them know what's happening," Cr Dickerson told the Daily Liberal.

"And now we're trying to resolve the issue as quickly as possible."

Late yesterday afternoon, the Dubbo Regional Council notified residents that there had been a failure in a pump which is part of the fluoride dosing system at Wellington's Water Treatment Plant, leaving Wellington's potable water supply un-fluoridated.

Areas affected include the Wellington township, Montefiores, Nanima Village, Wellington Caves, Wellington Correctional Centre and Macquarie Correctional Centre.

Mayor Dickerson said council has "learned" from the previous council's mistake in not informing the public about fluoridation issues.

"The main thing is councillors have been informed about it, the community's been informed about it and everyone knows what the story is so we can work towards a solution," he said.

"That's a move that is a given, I would have thought. It's one of the things I often say - I don't own council, councillors don't own council. The community owns the council and therefore has a right to know about all these different things that are happening.

"As much as possible we want to keep a flow of information going out to the community."

Council's operational staff say they have been advised by the supplier that the pump cannot be repaired and must be replaced. Due to the specialised nature of the pump, it must be sourced from Germany as there are no replacements in Australia.

The current timeline for the replacement pump to arrive is by mid-March, but Mayor Dickerson said council are exploring options to get one in earlier.

"Two months seems like an incredible amount of time to be able to get the part that we need but we're working to see if it's an issue with availability of the component itself or with the transport option," he said.

"If the component's in there waiting for it to be put on a ship somewhere and we have to wait two months for it to get here, well, let's see if we can get it on air-freight and what the cost of that is.

"Or - like with so many things around the world at the moment - if it's just a delay in getting the component. There are so many things in every business that are lacking in supply at the moment so it may well be a case of that."

He said operational staff kept up a regular maintenance schedule of the pump and the failure occurred only in the past couple of days and outside of the maintenance period.

"The process for any of our major infrastructure - the water treatment, the sewerage treatment plant - is that they have proactive maintenance schedules on them. It's not as if we sit around and wait until it fails and then fix it up," he said.

"There was a scheduled maintenance process in place for this piece of equipment, but, this essentially happened out-of-maintenance."

Asked if council was on-track with works to get the water supply in Dubbo fluoridated by June 2023, Cr Dickerson confirmed they were.

"Essentially that's still what we're on target for, we're still aiming for the end of June and things are progressing with that," he said.

"Things could happen of course but at this stage we're still on target."

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