THE long-awaited Dungowan Dam plans will go on public display at the end of the month and the NSW government hopes the progress will be enough to convince the federal government to continue funding the project in next Tuesday's budget.
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The Coalition committed more than $600 million to the dam, however Labor has declared all large-scale regional infrastructure funding is under review.
The NSW government has reserved more than $600m for the dam, but the project is dependent on the federal government funding.
NSW Water Minister Kevin Anderson said publicly releasing the environmental impact statement for the dam and its pipelines showed the state government was getting on with the job and called on the Commonwealth to reaffirm the dam's funding in the upcoming budget.
"This has been the culmination of more than two years of hard work by the NSW government," he said.
"The previous Commonwealth government had reserved 50 per cent of the project cost and NSW is looking forward to seeing that reservation maintained in the next budget.
"I have spoken with the Federal Water Minister, and the Deputy Premier has written to the Federal Treasurer to impress upon them the importance of the new Dungowan Dam."
Regional Development Minister Catherine King has ordered her department to review several regional funding programs - some of which she labelled Nationals' "slush funds" - worth billions of dollars.
"I've had to have a really hard look at where did the previous government invest, where it's going to actually help economic development in the regions and really work my way through those," Ms King said.
"So some of the things that the previous government funded we'll fund and some of them we won't."
The Dungowan dam and pipeline environmental impact statement will be on public exhibition for six weeks from Oct 26 to Dec 7. It can be accessed online at the NSW Planning Portal, at Tamworth council and library or the Department of Planning and Environment Offices.
There will also be a number of community meetings around the Tamworth region to provide project updates and answer questions.