An $85 million grant to clean ACT waterways, the biggest of its kind in Australia, won't fix Canberra's polluted lakes but could change the way Australians treat stormwater.
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A water scientist helping to oversee the Commonwealth-funded Basin Priority Project wants Canberra’s highly engineered concrete stormwater channels, which dump loads of nutrients into lakes, replaced with natural creeks. He also advocates that home owners in older suburbs install rainwater tanks.
The University of Canberra Institute of Applied Ecology director Professor Ross Thompson says Canberrans are aware of the pollution in their lakes, but are poorly informed and disinclined to take collective responsibility for keeping them in good condition.
Professor Thompson told a water conference on Wednesday 100 years of development had brought Canberra to a point where much of its stormwater run-off was hitting impervious surfaces and adding to pollution and bank erosion.
"A single investment of $85 million, which I always like to make the point, is about the same as putting a road bridge in, is not going to fix the water quality issues of Canberra," Professor Thompson said.
"But is certainly takes us a step along the way."
After the conference, he said the grant, announced in February, was the biggest of its kind in Australia’s history and showed the Commonwealth wanted to use Canberra as an examplar of what could be done across south-east Australia to manage stormwater.
"I am consistently asked, what solution we should do,'' Professor Thompson said in his prepared address. "Should it be roof tanks or stormwater wetlands?
“And I hate to tell you, the answer to that question is yes [both solutions are needed]."
He said in an ideal world and a city of the future, landholders would take responsibility for what came off their land. Roof tanks would take the first hit of rainfall, trap and hold it on properties. The water would be used on gardens, allowing it to find its way back into ground water and slowly percolate into the natural system.
Environment and Sustainable Development Minister Simon Corbell opened the conference, saying the Basin Project would look at six sub-catchments with different characteristics, from urbanised to semi-rural to greenfield: Yarralumla Creek, Lake Tuggeranong, Upper Molonglo, Lower Molonglo, Fyshwick and the new housing development of Riverview at West Belconnen.
Mr Corbell said not every sub-catchment in Canberra was covered, and the strategy would not fix all the urban water problems, but it was a great start.
“I am also aware there is a real hunger for action,’’ Mr Corbell said.
But the Commonwealth’s funding criteria included detailed monitoring in the six sub-catchments.
“A strategic audit of the effectiveness of existing water quality infrastructure will also be carried out as part of phase one," Mr Corbell said.
Phase two would be designing infrastructure options for each sub-catchment, to intercept and improve water.
Mr Corbell said the government’s focus was moving from potable water security to improving water quality in lakes and streams and downstream receiving waters.
All of the ACT's waste water and water run off went downstream via the Murrumbidgee River and ultimately to the mouth of the Murray River in South Australia.
"So we have an obligation to return high-quality water to the system," he said.