A community and business survey into how best secure the region's future water supply has not provided a clear preference for what option should be chosen.
Hunter Water conducted the survey of 1100 participants as part of its review of the Lower Hunter Water Security Plan.
Participants were provided with seven portfolio options representing different technology and infrastructure options.
"The results show that the community strongly supports us investing to ensure we can meet minimum customer demand during a drought. They strongly support water conservation and recycling. They strongly value the reliability of the water system and they also value the social and environmental impact of how we run our system," Hunter Water managing director Darren Cleary, who presented the results to the customer and community advisory committee on Tuesday said.
However they did not distinguish between options such as dams, desalination, inter-region transfers and purified recycled water.
"There was not a strong differentiation between any of the supply portfolios," Mr Cleary said.
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- Hunter Water considers building a new dam as one option in the Hunter's longterm water security strategy
Hunter Water is undertaking further analysis of the results and will release a final report in coming weeks.
The survey data will be used to inform the revised draft Lower Hunter Water Security plan, which will be released in July.
The final plan is due by the end of the year.
The potential construction of new dams remains the most contentious aspect of the review.
The Healthy Hunter Rivers Group argues that greater emphasis should be placed on recycling and conservation rather than new storage infrastructure. Group spokesman Ken Edwards said forecast increased climate volatility required water security strategies based on flexible supply options such as desalination rather than dams.
"The future of securing a reliable water supply does not lie in building new dams, it is in developing sustainable and climate independent sources of water such as permanent, large scale desalination and gearing our water supply/demand management around conservation, improved efficiencies, recycling, aquifer recharging and potable re-use," he said.
"Desalination will overcome the challenges ahead, being able to supply a reliable, safe and sustainable supply to our water system. Dams are extremely vulnerable to both present and future uncertainties, particularly the risk of relying on the one source of the Williams River system which presently supplies between 90 per cent to 94 per cent of our annual water consumption."
