‘C’ for waterway health in latest Fitzroy Basin report

The Fitzroy Basin has received a 'C' for waterway health in the latest report card from monitoring collective Fitzroy Partnership for River Health. Fitzroy Partnership for River Health executive officer Dr Leigh Stitz said the 10th Report Card launch allowed the group to reflect on the reasons for its commencement in the region. Dr Leigh Stitz. “In 2008, community concern about drinking water quality after major wet season flooding and authorised releases of mine water into the catchment led to the then-Queensland Premier Anna Bligh to call for an independent report on water quality, which started the push for independent waterway reporting for the community across the state,” she said. While waterway health might not remain top of mind at all times, the annual reporting brought together significant data so that if there was community concern, there were independent results for the region, Dr Stitz said. While the latest Report Card grade for the 2019-20 year was down to C from a low B in the previous year, the trends showed an overall stability and resilience over 10 years of reporting, she said. Lower grade blamed on dry year “More than 525,000 results were collated and assessed across 244 sites this year, with the majority of the catchments remaining unchanged, although the Fitzroy and Connors catchments did see a marked decline,” Dr Stitz said. “The expectation is that the decrease in overall grade can be partly attributed this year to lower than average rainfall across the Basin. “Ecosystem health is complex as at times waterway health may decline in a dry rainfall year if pollutants remain in-stream and are not flushed through the river system as we believe has happened this time, or it can improve if there is a reduction in sediment and run-off due to lack of rainfall.” Fitzroy Partnership for River Health was formed in 2012 and includes organisations from government, agriculture, resources, industry, research and community. Dr Stitz said partners recently committed to a new Regional Receiving Environment Monitoring Program, which meant more comprehensive data from a better range of sites would feed into the Report Card each year. "With this new system we will move from limited data or no data in some catchments to more wide-spread data for a more robust waterway reporting system; providing cost-savings to our partners by reducing the duplication in predominantly mining areas.” Interested community members can drill down to the detail of how each catchment fared this year at www.riverhealth.org.au.

‘C’ for waterway health in latest Fitzroy Basin report

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