As towns in parts of NSW count down to day zero when they officially run out of water, having a source the size of Canberra's is proving a godsend for parched rural landholders nearby.
Domestic water carriers around the ACT and nearby NSW and which tap into the government-owned Icon Water supply system are working flat out as the big dry creeps ever closer to the border.
The latest drought maps reveal that significant areas of surrounding shires are either in drought or drought-affected, including Queanbeyan-Palerang, Yass Valley and the Snowy Monaro.
For water carters like James Moore, every day is much the same: refill and drop off, refill and drop off. Only the service areas change.
His company has two water trucks operating six days a week and last month his previously part-time driver became full-time.
Such is the demand and the outlook for a long, dry summer ahead, he's now looking at buying a third water truck.
As he stopped to replenish his truck's tank with another 14,000 litres drawn from the mains pipe on Pialligo Avenue on Thursday, a rival joined the queue. Less than 500 metres away at a separate water mains access point, another tanker was filling up.
Both are Mr Moore's direct competitors, but he's not too concerned about the lost business.
"There's a huge amount of work out there," he said.
"It's been busy for us all year but in the past eight weeks, it's gone up another notch. There's about four or five other trucks which work our area and everyone's flat out.
"We have two trucks doing six or seven loads of water a day, six days a week."
When he's not carting water, he's farming his small property out at Burra where he keeps 120 head of cattle that he's hand-feeding every day because of the scarcity of feed.
"We are lucky because we have a few good dams on our property so we have good water storage," he said.
"But there's no feed in the paddocks so I really feel for the farmers up north and out west. They don't have water and they don't have feed."
Icon Water's four dams to the west and south of Canberra are fast emerging as the keepers of the most precious resource money can buy, even though local dam levels are at 53 per cent and falling.
Gaining access to Icon's mains supply is via a standpipe, and there are 335 standpipes on lease. To lease a 300mm standpipe costs just over $1000 a year and the water drawn is then metered on the pipe at a cost of $4.94 per 1000 litres.
Queanbeyan and its suburbs draw water from the Googong Dam but further out, underground bores supply a fast-growing Bungendore.
Until the results of some recent test drilling, extraction from Bungendore's old bores had been at the upper limits. Without enough town water, residential growth had been capped at 5000 people.
However, deep test drilling over the past 18 months into fractured rock yielded an as-yet-untapped supply of 1000 megalitres, which provides for double the size of the town's population.
The village of Murrumbateman, to Canberra's north, has been plagued by bore water issues for years. However, a 19km pipeline from the Yass Dam has been built and should be supplying the village by mid-2020.
Until then, this summer will be another difficult one for the village.
The Yass Valley Council's decision to spend $22 million five years ago to raise the wall of the Yass Dam by three metres provided a huge boost to the town's water security.
However, this was at the expense of water quality, which has suffered over recent years and generally worsens over the summer months. The NSW government has pledged $1.2 million for a new water treatment plant for the town.
