The ACT and federal governments will finally sign off on an $85 million plan to save Lake Burley Griffin and Canberra's other polluted waterways. The deal, to be formalised on Wednesday, follows neglect of the capital's degraded and toxic lakes and streams, with money languishing in bureaucratic limbo for nearly six years.
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ACT Environment Minister Simon Corbell and the federal government's Parliamentary Secretary for the Environment, Simon Birmingham, will sign the deal, releasing the money to help heal Lake Tuggeranong, Lake Ginninderra and numerous streams and creeks around the city.
But clean and healthy waterways for the city are still some way off, with two years of ''monitoring and data analysis'' scheduled before infrastructure work can actually begin.
The waters of Lake Burley Griffin - envisaged by Canberra's designer, Walter Burley Griffin, as the ''playground of the city'' - are in such a degraded state that most summers are marred by extensive lake closures caused by toxic blue-green algae blooms.
Lake Tuggeranong, Lake Ginninderra and the Gungahlin and Yerrabi ponds all have serious problems problems with algae and pollution.
A blueprint for healthy local waterways has been on the shelf since 2011, when the territory's Commissioner for the Environment published a landmark report on the state of Lake Burley Griffin, but political action and cash have been lacking.
The money for the new plan has been around since 2008, when the federal government allocated the ACT $85 million for water projects, including a desalination plant to capture salt from water being flushed into the Murrumbidgee River from the Lower Molonglo sewage treatment works.
The projects were abandoned after they failed to meet cost-benefit analysis.
Little has been done to tackle the key recommendations in the 2011 report - stopping nutrient inflows, reducing carp numbers, neutralising major pollution sources, and getting money to community groups to support their grassroots conservation work.
But Mr Corbell said Wednesday's agreement will kick-start efforts to clean up Canberra's waterways. ''This project will complement ACT government efforts to reduce the impact of Canberra's urban run-off on downstream water quality in the Murray-Darling Basin.''
He nominated ''priority catchments'' including Yarralumla Creek, Fyshwick and new development areas in Lower Molonglo and West Belconnen, ''selected as they can provide the greatest improvements in water quality''.
''By establishing a territory-wide water-quality monitoring system, the project will also ensure that the necessary information and analysis for improved catchment management across the territory is available,'' Mr Corbell said.
Senator Birmingham said cleaner lakes and streams in the ACT would improve the health of the local segments of the Murray-Darling Basin system.
''Reducing the level of nutrients and other pollutants flowing into local waters will also improve water quality and river health in the Murray-Darling Basin downstream of the ACT,'' he said.
''The project will focus on six priority catchments that account for 74 per cent of total run-off and 54 per cent of total pollutant load in ACT waterways.''
But there will be two years of ''monitoring and data analysis'' of the nominated catchments before the hard infrastructure works - such as building wetlands and sedimentation management systems, designed to capture or divert harmful urban run-off - begins.
