In January 2020, the Port Macquarie News reported that MidCoast Council in New South Wales was speeding up a temporary desalination unit beside its Nabiac Aquifer supply plant after a drought of over a year. The council planned to hire a plant fitted in shipping containers, using two-stage filtration and reverse osmosis to treat salt water from the Wallamba River. It was to deliver as much as 5.5 million litres daily, about 5,500 m³/d, by March 2020. Site works started while state approval for a $1 million grant was pending.
The report showed how a drought-hit region turned to hired containerised plants. Desalination was meant only to supplement the aquifer supply so that emergency demand across the scheme could be met.