Page 2263 - Week 08 - Tuesday, 4 August 2015
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Initially six priority catchment projects were identified: Lake Tuggeranong, Yarralumla Creek, Fyshwick, lower Molonglo, upper Molonglo, and west Belconnen. Each of these is intended to showcase best practice solutions for different scenarios and challenges; solutions that can hopefully be replicated both across the catchment and across Australia in the future.
Over the past 18 months work has been undertaken to identify over 150 potential projects over the six catchments. Options have included everything from wetlands and ponds to gross pollutant traps, carbon filters, sediment curtains and floating wetlands. The project team have recently commenced further community consultation on these options, with workshops across Canberra last week and this week and an online survey being undertaken following the letterboxing of all Canberra residents. It has been very exciting to see the work that was committed to in the parliamentary agreement now coming into the public consultation phase.
Today we are here to pass a bill that will put into the Water Resources Act the mechanism by which the governance for the catchment will be coordinated. The bill will establish a catchment management coordination group which will bring together stakeholders from across the relevant jurisdictions and ACT directorates. The coordination group will be headed by an independent chair and will include a community representative. It will include directors-generals from Chief Minister, Treasury and Economic Development Directorate, the Environment and Planning Directorate, the Health Directorate and, of course, the Territory and Municipal Services Directorate. It will also include the commissioner of the ESA, a representative of the National Capital Authority and a representative of the New South Wales government agency that has responsibility for water catchment. Under section 67E(1)(g) the minister may also prescribe other members, and a regulation has been tabled with the bill that prescribes representatives of surrounding local councils in New South Wales, the New South Wales local land service and a representative of Icon Water.
The group will serve the function of advising the minister on matters relating to water catchment management in the ACT and the catchment region. The group will advise the minister on priorities for water catchment management, actions or strategies to build partnerships to improve catchment health; coordinate investment with regard to water catchments; and advise the minister on the likely impact of proposed developments or events in the catchment, as well as actions or strategies to address the impacts of such developments.
The catchment coordination group that is being proposed today is not exactly the catchment management authority that the Greens had in mind when we took this issue to the election, but we agreed there were significant hurdles in negotiating a catchment management authority that had its own decision-making power and its own budget, especially across a number of jurisdictions. There could also have been a significant time delay had the ACT proceeded with such a negotiation. We need to acknowledge that securing funds for a catchment management authority would have been difficult, and that the funding that is currently available in the short term sits with the ACT government in a formal agreement with the commonwealth.
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