Council projects

Interpretive Indigenous Garden

Council in conjunction with LifeLinks, is developing an Interpretive Indigenous Garden that displays local plants and provides information on how residents can incorporate the ... more »

Environmental Volunteer Program

In the early 1990’s a small of group of coastal residents began restoring the coast line through revegetation and weed control. The dedicated group became known as the Holdfas ... more »

WaterWise Communities

From Friday the 15th of January 2010 Holdfast Bay residents, businesses, schools, churches, sporting and recreational facilities will be able to register for ‘WaterWise Commun ... more »

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Help protect our waterways

Our water practices over the past 200 years have left many of our waterways and the ecosystems that sustain them degraded. Help restore our rivers, lakes and estuaries.

Over the past two centuries our land clearing, some farming practices, unsustainable water usage, and some industrial and business practices have contributed to the degradation of the health of our waterways. Signs of this decline in the health include the loss of biodiversity, toxic algal blooms, declining water quality, and increased salinity and sedimentation. This, in turn, affects the health of the 1000+ estuaries around our coast. The Murray represents an example of what can result when waterways are used in an unsustainable manner.

There are many things we can do to increase our understanding and help conserve our rivers, lakes and estuaries.

How to do it now!

Demand that adequate environmental flows are restored to all Australian rivers.

A UNESCO-IHE Institute for Water Education report on the global trade in embedded water in agricultural products (2005) [PDF document] found that Australia has an annual net loss of 57,000 billion litres of water! This means, Australia's net trade in agricultural products incurs a water loss of over twice the water that we capture annually in all our dams and catchments.

The reason we have a drought is largely because of gross mismanagement of our natural resources rather than El Nino, global warming or any other phenomena that is trotted out to explain away the situation. And these figures don’t include our non-agricultural water deficit resulting from wood, paper and aluminium exports.

Voice your concern by writing to your state MP or the Minister for Water.
Join a Non-Government Organisation (NGO) and add your voice to their lobbying activities. NGO's concerned about waterways issues include:
Consider the restoration of water ways and associated ecosystems when assessing your criteria for upcoming elections.
Join an environmental volunteer group that revegetates, weeds, and restores local waterways.
The best place to start is to find local groups working on your local waterway such as the environmental volunteers within Holdfast Bay. Alternatively you can log onto Waterwatch. Friends of Parks also restore waterways and have a list of these groups on their site.

National organisations involved in regeneration of the land also specialise in river and estuary regeneration projects. These include:

Why is this action important?

Fresh water is the lifeblood of nature. Without it, we would not have clean air, food, drink and many aesthetic and recreational benefits. Therefore, we need to ensure we use water in a sustainable way. We need to use water in a way that enables future generations to have access to fresh water. In addition conserving our water resources conserves our natural resources.

Related actions

Environment

Almost every river and wetland system in Australia has in some way been affected through human activity, such as irrigation. River Red Gums, fish breeding stocks and the estuary systems are dying. As the population grows, so does the need for water resources. If left as is, our waterways would continue to degrade, however we as a society can play an important role in reversing this trend. This action moves us toward using water efficiently and ensuring our natural systems can replenish themselves

Wellbeing

Clean fresh water from the tap is, for most people in the world, a luxury. However many societies throughout the world are not so fortunate and millions of people suffer from diseases as a result of polluted water. If we do not conserve our water resources we will have to move towards other forms of water treatment, which consume large amounts of energy and do not address the restoration of the depleted waterways. So use water wisely and conserve this precious resource.