The state government says it is considering options to help resolve the water crisis in the western New South Wales town of Walgett, including installing a desalination system for the town’s bore water supply.

Walgett has been forced to survive on bore water for almost 18 months as the Barwon and Namoi rivers are both dry. One expert said the levels of sodium in the bore water was “concerning”, while locals say it smells and tastes bad.

The minister for primary industries and regional water, Niall Blair, has asked for “a full report” from water and public health officials this week, while locals are calling for a royal commission into the mismanagement of water in the Murray-Darling basin.

“We’re doing everything we can to support the shire,” Blair said. “We’re looking at the option of helping them take water from environmental flows upstream. We could extend a pipeline to take that water.”

The Dharriwaa elders in Walgett asked University of NSW associate professor Jackie Webster to test the salt content.

“The sodium levels are concerning,” Webster said. “300mg a litre is much higher than the Australian drinking water guideline of 180mg/L, and this guideline is based on palatability, not health.

“No health-based guideline value is proposed for sodium. However, the guideline does state that ‘medical practitioners treating people with severe hypertension or congestive heart failure should be aware if the sodium concentration in the patient’s drinking water exceeds 20 mg/L.

“The sodium content of the Walgett tap water is 15 times this amount.”

Earlier this month, the town’s bore pump failed and there was no running water at all. Crowdfunding campaigns sprang up across NSW to send fresh water to Walgett.

The pump was repaired, and the bore water is back, but locals are losing patience.

“We appreciate the water that people are bringing us,” Dhariwaa elder Virginia Robinson said. “But it’s not the solution. We want to advocate for better water management. This is not the drought. It’s worse than that.

“It’s a triple whammy – drought, land clearing and climate change – that means no water.”

However, Blair insists drought is to blame.

“The problem is Lake Keepit is empty and farming communities have zero allocation, they’ve got no water either,” Blair said.

Lake Keepit is the dam upstream on the Namoi river and is currently at 0.5% capacity. Three weeks ago, a series of environmental releases were sent down the Namoi but “it took three releases, four actually, for any water to arrive because the river is so dry, it all soaked into the ground”, Blair said.

Construction to raise the town weir by a metre is going out to tender in coming weeks. This too is a source of tension in the town. At a meeting of several hundred locals last week, there was disagreement. Local Gamilaraay people would rather the weir was removed to allow a free flow of the river while other townspeople say a metre isn’t high enough to trap enough water for the town’s long-term sustainability.

“I know there’s an internal debate about height of the weir,” Blair said. “But the funding is to put another metre on. Anything higher would need us to redesign and reengineer the weir and would need further funding. The shire was adamant that funding for weir for extra 1m was adequate. The locals can debate that.”

Yuwalaraay man Ted Fields is calling for a royal commission in to the Murray-Darling basin. Photograph: Carly Earl/The Guardian

Yuwalaraay man Ted Fields has been involved in cultural heritage management for decades and is calling for a royal commission in to the Murray-Darling basin.

“It’s not just climate change, it’s not just drought, there’s something else going on and more has to be done around the security of water,” he said. “This is a government-created problem. It’s a a flawed system and everyone knows the system is over-allocated.

“There’s nothing in the upper catchment. Keepit dam is empty but strangely enough I’ve been driving back and forth from Walgett to Tamworth for two years and there’s some beautiful cotton paddocks up near Narrabri being irrigated.

“We drove past a cotton farm this morning that had the sprinklers on, irrigating their crops, just outside Narrabri. And there’s thousands of acres, it’s not just there and there.

“There’s cultural despair in our people. The outlook for them is quite bleak. Walgett is a town where if you come back here and the river’s running, everyone is smiling and happy, you can feel it. So there’s despair and depression because the people who are supposed to be looking after us are looking after somebody else.”