If you were among the hundreds of people left without water for many hours last weekend, we thought you might be interested in the response we got from Sydney Water.

First off, they were effusive in their apology for leaving us without water for so long. There were multiple complexities throughout the night.

We were told there would be a small rebate as the outage had exceeded a threshold (watch your bill).

We were advised that if you have an urgent need for water during an outage to contact them and they will try and come to your assistance.

We were advised that the best way to see what is going on is to use their website (details later). We explained that on the night the time of expected completion for some jobs was not being updated (so we had no idea when supply would be resumed). Their excuse was that they are reliant on the field workers to update the support centre and that often the workers feel it is more important to keep working rather than keeping people informed  (welcome comments on that one).

Also advised that you can ring. On the night, there were reports on social media that people who rang in received more information than what was on the website.

So, here is how you can communicate and get information (and water?) from Sydney Water.

The general number to report a leak (or to get updates) is:

13 20 90

Or you can use https://www.sydneywater.com.au/SW/water-the-environment/what-you-can-do/report-a-leak/index.htm or from here REPORT A LEAK

Their website to check the status of supply in your area is: https://www.sydneywater.com.au/SW/water-the-environment/how-we-manage-sydney-s-water/water-supply-service-updates/index.htm or CHECK SUPPLY STATUS

Sydney Water are also trialing a new system where they are sending out alerts when supply is interrupted. This is only available in their western area at the moment, but you can register at: https://www.sydneywater.com.au/SW/water-the-environment/what-you-can-do/register-for-water-outage-alerts/index.htm or REGISTER FOR ALERTS

We trusts this assists.