Eurobodalla's $150m dam is about half full. Summer still rests on Deep Creek.

Eurobodalla goes into summer with its old dam nearly full and its new one about half full. Deep Creek Dam, the shire's main storage since 1983, was at 98 per cent capacity, holding around 4,900 million litres, in the council's media release of 16 September 2026, and the council's water snapshot, dated October 2026 when we read it on 3 October, still showed 98 per cent and no restriction level. The $150 million Southern Water Supply Storage beside the Tuross River is built, and the council's project page, last updated October 2026, says pumping through autumn and early winter filled the dam to around 50 per cent before Dry conditions and lower river flows have slowed progress for now. The NSW Government's release of 11 September 2026 says the dam is expected to reach capacity by mid-2027, subject to river conditions.

So the short answer to the question the council itself raised on 16 September is this. Whether Eurobodalla faces water restrictions this summer depends on Deep Creek Dam and on rain in the Deua catchment, as it did before the new dam was built. The council's water manager, Sarah Lunau, put it plainly in that release: We’ll need some decent rain before next year to avoid water restrictions coming into effect. The Southern Storage is a drought buffer that is still being filled, and on the documents we have read it is not yet part of the rule that decides when restrictions start.

Two storages, one trigger table

Deep Creek Dam near Mogo is an off-river storage fed by pumping from the Deua River, with a capacity of 4,900 million litres and a maximum depth of 27 metres. The Southern Storage is the same idea about 30 kilometres south of Moruya: a 3,000 megalitre off-river dam next to the Tuross River, predominantly in Bodalla State Forest, filled by a new pump station that takes water during times of high flows. The state's release gives the wall as 38 metres deep and 370 metres long.

The rule that turns a dam level into a restriction is in the council's Integrated Water Cycle Management Strategy, the September 2023 final report prepared for the council by Hydrosphere Consulting, which reproduces the drought regime from the 2011 Eurobodalla Water Supply Drought Management Plan. Its Table 5 lists four triggers: the Deep Creek Dam level, the Tuross River aquifer level, the flow in the Moruya River and the weather pattern. Level 1 restrictions come in when Deep Creek is falling at or below 90 per cent with the Moruya River flowing at less than 5 megalitres a day; Level 2 at 70 per cent with the river at zero; Level 3 at 60 per cent, when the Tuross aquifer is also down to 80 per cent; Level 4 at 40 per cent; Level 5 at 30 per cent; Level 6 is an empty dam. Restrictions lift on the way back up at a higher mark than they came in, so Level 1 does not end until the dam is back at or above 80 per cent with the river flowing again. The Southern Storage does not appear in that table. The strategy says A Drought and Emergency Response Contingency Plan (DERCP) will be prepared with consideration of the adopted water supply augmentation strategy (page 29). We have not found a published version of that plan. The council's Water Restrictions Policy, approved 22 November 2022, says the Drought Management Plan is to be found on the council's plans and strategies page; when we read that page on 3 October 2026 the water documents listed were the IWCM strategy and its summary.

The triggers are not automatic. The policy says The General Manager or Director Infrastructure Services may vary the adopted trigger levels after taking into account seasonal water demand variations and the medium or long-term weather forecast, and the 16 September release says the same in plainer words: Although restriction triggers are linked to dam storage levels, Council also considers factors such as water demand, river flows, catchment conditions and climate forecasts when making decisions about water restrictions. In our reading, that is how the new storage will first matter this summer if it matters at all: not as a number in the table, but as water the council knows it has in reserve when it weighs a 90 per cent dam against a dry forecast. That is a judgement the council has not stated in writing, and we have not asked it to; if it does, we will add it here.

What a restriction means at the tap

On 3 October 2026 the shire was at Level 0, which the council calls permanent water conservation measures: outdoor watering only between 4pm and 10am (5pm to 10am in daylight saving), hard surfaces hosed only after spills, before painting or to shift algae and moss, cars and boats washed on grass with a bucket and a trigger nozzle, pools covered when not in use, and no washing boats at ramps. The IWCM strategy says the five restriction levels above that provide increasing restrictions on outdoor water use and applies to all water users including residents, visitors, businesses and organisations (page 29). The level-by-level rules themselves are in the 2011 plan, which we have not been able to read, so we cannot tell you here what Level 2 bans that Level 1 does not. The policy does say council rangers are delegated to issue penalties for non-compliance under section 637 of the Local Government Act.

What the table does show is how much water each level is meant to save. The shire's unrestricted summer target is 16.7 megalitres a day across the whole system. Level 1 aims for 15.9, Level 3 for 13.9 and Level 4 for 13.4; Level 6, the emergency setting, is 5.1 megalitres a day in every season. The strategy's own review of 2013 to 2022 found restrictions were in force 308 days, 8 per cent of the time, or twice in 10 years, and that restricted demand averaged 86 per cent of unrestricted demand. The last run is the one most residents remember: Level 3 from 14 October 2019, Level 4 from 2 December 2019 through the Black Summer fires to 27 February 2020, stepped down to Level 2 and lifted on 15 May 2020. The strategy's account is that very low river flows meant no extraction to fill Deep Creek from July 2019, consumption rose in January 2020 because of the bushfires, and rain in February 2020 restored the river and the pumping. The council's project timeline records the earlier episode in one line: in 2018, council introduced water restrictions highlighting the need for the Southern Water Supply Storage.

Why the new dam fills slowly

The Southern Storage can only be filled when the Tuross River is high. That is a condition of the project, not a fault in it. The council's page says water will be pumped in accordance with the Water Sharing Plan for the Tuross River Unregulated and Alluvial Water Sources 2016, which sets a maximum amount of water that can be extracted depending on the river flow at the time. The IWCM strategy is more specific: the federal grant is contingent on ESC forgoing access to low flows in the Tuross River (< 20 ML/d) to provide benefits to downstream users (page 45), and the dam is filled with no access to low river flows (page 49). The strategy's chart of the sharing plan's rules at the Eurobodalla gauge puts the take at up to 8 megalitres a day when the river is running 20 to 50 megalitres a day, 8 plus half of everything above 50 when it runs 50 to 200, and no daily limit above 200. The new intake pump station can draw up to 26 megalitres from the river and 6 from the borefield, and the strategy notes the council would seek a supplementary licence to fill the dam, the existing one being currently limited to 900 ML/a.

Put those together and the slow fill is arithmetic. A 3,000 megalitre dam filled at the 8 megalitre a day cap of a modest river takes more than a year of continuous pumping; it fills fast only in the weeks when the Tuross is in flood. The strategy planned for exactly this, allowing two years for filling of the storage (page 45), with the dam built by 2024 and operational by 2026. The wall was finished in 2026, two years later than that plan, after rain events through 2024 slowed construction; the state's mid-2027 date for a full dam is that two-year fill, started late. The same river rules are also why a wet year matters twice over for this shire. It fills Deep Creek from the Deua, and it is the only time the Tuross runs high enough to fill the south.

What $150 million buys, and when

The funding page of the Commonwealth's National Water Grid, last updated 22 July 2026, gives the split exactly: Australian Government $51,224,000, New South Wales Government $25,612,500 and Eurobodalla Shire Council $73,163,500. The three add to $150,000,000, and the council's share is 48.8 per cent. The council's own page gives the first two figures and says Council will fund the remainder. The project is also meant to leave more water in the river for others: both the state release and the federal page say it will deliver an estimated additional 581 ML per annum for downstream irrigators and stock watering, the downstream benefit the strategy says the forgone low flows are meant to provide.

The three governments do not quite agree on when the project is finished. The federal page says Construction and dry commissioning are complete, with wet commissioning underway and the overall project expected to be completed in mid-2026. The council's page still lists the status as In progress against a timeframe of 2016 to 2025. The NSW release of 11 September 2026 celebrates completion of the dam wall and gives mid-2027 for a full dam. Those are three different milestones, works, commissioning and water, and the one a household should care about is the last.

Even full, the new dam is a stage rather than an answer. The strategy's secure-yield analysis found the system is not currently secure, that the Southern Storage will increase the yield by 587 ML/a, and that The system will require additional augmentation to be considered secure from approximately 2031. Stage 2 is a new 12 megalitre a day southern treatment plant and a pipeline to move 8 megalitres a day from south to north, to be completed by 2029; with both stages the strategy says demand is met until approximately 2070. The reason the plant matters is in the strategy's description of the system as it stood in 2023: the southern treatment plant west of Bodalla was designed for 6 megalitres a day but is operated at 4, and the whole shire is fed from Deep Creek throughout the year apart from the peak season, when the south is supplied from the Tuross. A 3,000 megalitre dam behind a 4 megalitre a day plant is a reserve the shire cannot draw on quickly. That is what the 2029 works are for.

Mayor Mathew Hatcher's words in the state release were Completing the dam wall is a huge achievement for Eurobodalla. This project will give our community the water security we need to thrive, even during tough droughts. On the council's own strategy that is true from about 2029, for about 40 years. For the summer of 2026-27 the shire has what it had last year: a full Deep Creek Dam, a trigger at 90 per cent, and a forecast it is watching. Residents can watch the same number; the council updates the dam level on its water page weekly, and the usage charge this year is $4.37 per 1,000 litres.