But water and waste water director Daniel Buckens said that his recommendation would be to not impose restrictions at this point.

"We are seeing at the moment there has been a very steep decrease in demand [of water], people are conscious, and people are using less without us imposing restrictions. So without doing anything, people are already mindful," he said.

"Putting restrictions in at this point, I don't think would give you any benefits, and we are currently managing it in accordance with those drought management plans that are in place."

Cr Stephen Lesslie said that he wanted to put in water restrictions when Oberon dam reached 30 percent and not have them lifted until the dam reached 60 percent.

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"We have to consider there is no real belief that the drought will break soon, I think we need to take water restrictions seriously," he said.

"The Clarence Transfer is good for us, and Oberon dam is on the other side of the great divide and I think we have to be slightly conscious of us taking from the West and bringing it to the East."

Cr Lesslie's main reason for wanting restrictions was to make the residents of Lithgow realise this was an ongoing problem.

"This is something we are likely to face well into the future," he said.

"This is timely, Oberon dam could reach 30 percent soon, and then without council meetings in December and January, who knows where the level will be by then?"

Mr Buckens said that council has been managing its resources in conjunction with the drought management plan that was prepared by the State government.

"Our restriction level is based on that graph [above] so as you can see demand is currently lower then what the level four restriction is, at 20 percent," he said.

"If our demand starts to trigger up above those lines at those restriction levels, that's when the restrictions would be implemented."

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Mr Buckens said that they could manage demand curves through the Clarence Transfer System since there was ample supply coming out of the mine at the moment.

"We can shift our supply zones to shift further to the villages so we don't have to put in restrictions, that was the idea of the Clarence Transfer System," he said.

One of the ways the council is managing the water supply is through the roll out and installation of smart waters meters, which commenced in August 2019. The first of the meters were installed in the Oakey Park area before progressing west through Lithgow and then onto Wallerawang, Lidsdale, Portland, Cullen Bullen, Rydal and Glen Davis.

The system was designed to help prevent the estimated 36 per cent of water lost after the treatment process, or after its purchase from WaterNSW, according to Mr Buckens.

"Our smart metering is currently saving us around 1200 litres an hour in what we detected in leaks from the 3300 metres that we have installed," he said.

"So we are actively managing demand and decreasing the amount of leaks we've got through the network to basically holding water in storage."

Mr Buckens also spoke about the financial implications of water restrictions.

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"We pay a fixed access amount of 80 percent of our allocation, and because of that we pay $1.2 million in access fees from the fish river," he said.

"If we reduce via restriction, we will also have to reduce other revenues to cover those costs."

Mr Buckens said that they can look to reduce demand from the fish river further if they can get some of their costs waived by the State Government.

"At this point it is not an option to do that as it will have big budget implications," he said.

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