In a big win for community advocates and the Greens, the Rockliff Government will move to establish a catchment management authority for the Derwent River region.
Last year I was proud to sponsor a Parliamentary petition from community group Safe Water Hobart about water quality in the Derwent. Its key call for action was for the government to create a Derwent catchment authority. In their formal response to the petition, tabled in Parliament this week, the government have agreed to do just that.
Establishing a Derwent catchment authority is a critical step to protect the region’s river health, water security, and water quality into the future. That’s why the Greens and people in the community have spent years pushing for this step to be taken, and we are so pleased to see the government have now listened.
At the moment the management of the river system is a real hodge-podge. Various organisations and water users are all operating in their own silos, without much thinking about how they are affecting each other, or the overall state of the Derwent.
The current approach to the catchment fails to recognise how things like water security, land use, water quality, river health, and water use are all part of the same big picture. Creating a catchment authority recognises how connected all these considerations are, and will allow them to be better balanced and managed.
The lack of integrated catchment management in the Derwent region has already had plenty of impacts. For example, we’ve previously seen environmental pressures leading the water restrictions for Greater Hobart’s residential water users. We also know there is much more that needs to be done to deal with the cumulative impact of changes to land use, to manage toxins and pollutants, and to ensure we are prepared for continuing changes to the climate.
With the Rockliff Government now looking at how they are going to set up this Derwent catchment authority, we strongly urge them not to cut corners, and to choose the gold standard approach. That means making the effort and taking the time to develop a statutory Water Management Plan to underpin and give real weight to the work of the catchment authority. Taking this step is long overdue, but now is the perfect opportunity to make sure it finally happens.
Of course, we also repeat our calls for the government to move towards integrated catchment management, supported by statutory plans, right across Tasmania.
Link to petition:
https://haepetitions.parliament.tas.gov.au/haepet/Home/PetitionDetails/123?title=Petition%20Details
Link to official government response where decision is announced:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1hYpH8I2DPJ1lG9ZbBtwgPLIKxQ_DuynM/view?usp=drivesdk
