Council staff received more than 137 separate requests after three days of consistent frost, and has a maintenance backlog trying to fix the pipes. 

“We had a lot of requests, including people calling to find out where to turn their water off, so we have a bit of a backlog,” executive manager for water and waste water Daniel Buckens said. 

When comparing this winter to previous years, Mr Buckens said the frost was what has made the difference.

“It’s hard to say, we didn’t have the extreme frosts last year that we did this year, but this is similar to previous years,” he said. 

Council infrastructure affected by the frost mainly includes pipe work that was exposed in public and open spaces. 

“Public toilets and the like have been affected and we have found damage around the water metres,” Mr Buckens said.

“There were also breakages in open spaces so there is still some isolated water that we have to fix.” 

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Mr Buckens said council wouldn’t be able to determine how much water had been lost until the metres were read at the end of the quarter. 

“It is hard to determine what our losses are but we will discuss them at the next meeting,” he said. 

Lithgow’s community infrastructure has also been hit hard with many people reporting broken pipes. 

“The community areas that we found, we have responded and provided assistance where we can,” Mr Buckens said. 

Lithgow Heating and Plumbing put out a Facebook post suggesting that clients turn off their water to stop from flooding if broken pipes occur. 

“I can imagine the local plumbers are being kept rather busy, which is good for business,” Mr Buckens said.  

“We should be up to date by the end of the week and have fixed the pipes.”