Page 3644 - Week 10 - Wednesday, 13 September 2017
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Over 60 applications were submitted for the grant program, and each application was thoroughly assessed, including through site visits, before the final 15 projects were selected. Spread across the ACT, the grant recipients will fund projects such as rain gardens, mulching systems, downpipe disconnection and nature strip treatments, and, for rural areas, erosion control as demonstrations of the best practices others can learn from.
These 15 successful project sites will provide practical examples of how others can implement simple solutions for managing stormwater on their block and lead to a further removal of polluting intakes from our waterways. Through our partnership with Open Gardens Canberra, people will be able to visit the sites to see firsthand how others are redesigning their gardens to make better use of water, minimise contamination run-off and ensure that only rain goes down the stormwater drain.
The broader education program, including projects such as “Drain art”, which includes the placement of painted designs and asphalt art decals and stickers in prominent areas along City Walk in Civic, will show how pollutants such as rubbish, cigarettes, oil, leaves and grass, which wash from the street into stormwater drains, result in poor water quality for water that ends up in our lakes and our waterways. (Time expired.)
MR STEEL: Minister, how will the grant projects help to improve the health of Canberra’s waterways?
MR GENTLEMAN: The grant program plays a very important role in getting the community involved in improving the health of our waterways. With over 80 per cent of respondents to a survey indicating that they enjoy the waterways on a regular basis for activities such as jogging, cycling or fishing, it is clear that the people of Canberra value their waterways greatly, and the ACT government is committed to keeping them healthy.
The grant program, which as I said before has seen over $55,000 provided to 15 residential properties, will enable the delivery of projects such as rain gardens, mulching systems and, for rural areas, erosion control These projects will provide actual benefits to the residential properties and the waterways through the reduction of waste entering stormwater drains and subsequently the waterways. But they also provide practical examples of how others can implement simple solutions for managing stormwater on their blocks.
Examples such as a property in Chisholm—where a refurbishment of an established garden to reflect better management of water, including rehabilitation of an artificial creek, conversion of an existing nature stript to a more water-friendly treatment and an upgrade of the existing irrigation system to better connect to new and existing rainwater storage—show how these improvements have been made in suburban areas; while a redevelopment in Curtin, which includes flo-cell units to be installed to support lawns fed by below-ground water storage beneath the turf, shows how more densely populated areas can also contribute.
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