Page 189 - Week 01 - Wednesday, 26 February 2014
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This is a very important funding commitment and agreement between the two governments. It will see funding deployed to improve water quality across the ACT in a range of subcatchments. It is designed to improve the long-term water quality of our much-valued lakes, ponds and waterways. It is part of a funding agreement that has been struck through the ACT’s participation in the Murray-Darling Basin agreement negotiations that have now stretched out over the past three to four years.
This funding is being delivered through a basin priority project. It recognises the commitment of both levels of government to improving the health of our waterways and therefore improving the quality of water that is discharged from our stormwater systems, urban creeks and waterways into the Murrumbidgee River. It recognises that we are the largest urban centre in the Murray-Darling Basin. We have a particular responsibility—and a very different responsibility from other parts of the basin, because of our highly urbanised nature—to manage the quality of water that is discharged from our urban environment into the Murrumbidgee River and therefore the basin as a whole.
We are, of course, very privileged to be at the top of the basin in so many ways and to draw down high quality water for our drinking water and other use. Therefore it is incumbent on us, given the quality of water that we draw upon, that we return water into the basin of a similar quality.
That is what this new project is all about. I was delighted to be joined by the federal parliamentary secretary for the environment, Senator Simon Birmingham, today at lunchtime to make the announcement jointly. It is an important commitment on the part of both governments. The commonwealth will provide funding of up to $85 million. The territory has committed to equivalent funding, to approximately 10 per cent of the total value of the commonwealth funding, in related and associated works. The intention behind that is a partnership—a partnership to improve water quality in our waterways, in our urban creeks, in our urban water bodies, lakes, ponds and so on.
The project is an important one because it will, first and foremost, facilitate the deployment, for the first time, of an ACT-wide monitoring and research regime to help us understand where the pollutant loads are across all of our subcatchments; to undertake the research and monitoring, and get the data set needed, to establish a clear baseline of how our waterways are performing; and then to target the problem areas with interventions that will improve and address the problems we see in those waterways. We expect to see a range of measures put in place through that—measures such as sedimentation ponds, off-line urban wetlands, gross pollutant traps, swales and so on—which are going to help improve water quality.
I know that already there is very strong interest across the community in this funding. Residents are keen to see constructed wetlands and other measures put in place. I look forward to progressing these issues with the community, with interested organisations and with the commonwealth to improve water quality here in the ACT.
MADAM SPEAKER: A supplementary question, Ms Berry.
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