Please note: for now this page remains a working draft and is yet to be finalised.

 A Single Living Entity Framing for our waterways.

As river advocates, members of the Concerned Waterways Alliance (CWA) have long understood rivers as more than channels for water, they are living entities with intrinsic value, deeply connected to the health of landscapes, ecosystems, and communities. This understanding is central to our advocacy for stronger protections and more respectful treatment of Victoria’s rivers, wetlands, creeks, and aquifers.

We welcome the Victorian Government’s proposal to formally recognise waterways as living entities in legislation. This important step affirms a growing recognition that waterways deserve more than functional management but rather they require care, reciprocity, and respect.

We acknowledge that our perspective may not fully reflect the deep cultural and spiritual relationships that Traditional Owners hold with land and water, relationships grounded in thousands of years of custodianship and a profound understanding of interconnectedness. The desire to see waterways restored and protected is very much shared. It is a core part of what drives our work.

This page takes a holistic look at what we feel recognising rivers as living entities means in practice. It calls attention to and itemises the many factors impacting waterways: flows, land use, pollution, climate pressures, governance, and cultural health, and emphasises the ethical responsibility that comes with such a framing. This is not about symbolic language. It is about deepening our commitment to meaningful change.

For a more legal understanding of what rivers and single living entities entails, please visit ourpage: https://concernedwaterwaysalliance.org/launch-what-is-a-waterway-by-dr-bruce-lindsay/

Rivers as Living Beings: A Story of Connection, Strain, and Renewal

Imagine a river not as a simple line on a map, but as a living, breathing being, a system of immense biological complexity and beauty. It begins high in the headwaters, where deep soil flows form a trickle that might feed soak then a stream, which becomes a creek, then a river, winding through forests, plains, and towns. It both full of life and draws in life along its journey and gives life in return. It is a home, a pathway, a food source, and sanctuary. It connects everything it touches.

To truly care for our rivers, we must see them this way, as single, interconnected living entities that give life to a whole range of systems on its journey. Their health is not just determined by a single point, a single town, or a single species. Every part of a river system is linked, and when we degrade one reach, or over plunder its resources, we harm the whole. A dam, diversion structure or reservoir upstream, changes the flow for hundreds of kilometres. Sediments, pesticides and nutrients from farmland runoff or from urban areas and major roads impact the health of streams unseen, to the sea. And what we take, keep, and put into our waterways affects every creature, including us.

Ancestral Connections

For countless generations, this country's traditional custodians have understood rivers not as mere channels of water but as living kin. Rivers were, and remain, deeply woven into cultural identity, spiritual practice, and survival. They are ancestors, providers, and teachers. Aboriginal nations across Australia developed profound reciprocal relationships with waterways, guided by laws and traditions that recognised rivers as dynamic, givers of life and sentient presences deserving of respect and care.

This perspective, that rivers are living beings, shaped how people moved through Country, how they took and shared water, how they understood abundance and scarcity. Caring for rivers meant caring for life itself.

The Impacts of Colonisation 

Colonisation disrupted these relationships almost overnight. Rivers that had been tended and revered, became resources to be plundered, controlled, extracted, and reengineered.

Large catchment dams built to supply expanding cities severed natural flows and disrupted ecosystems. Irrigation weirs turned seasonal creeks into managed drains with little life. New industries and agriculture took more than water, they erased knowledge and custodianship.

The laws that came from colonisation redefined rivers as property and infrastructure. The impacts have been cumulative and profound.

As rivers were treated as mere resources, disconnection followed, not only the disconnection of habitats and protective care, but of people themselves from the waterways that sustained them.

A Contemporary Shift in Values

Today, there is a growing recognition that this story must change. The old model of plundering, diverting, extracting, containing and disposing, has left rivers stressed, polluted, diverted and degraded. But there is another way forward: one that revives both ecological integrity and cultural perspectives.

Across Australia, efforts are emerging to see rivers as whole living systems again. Social understanding is catching up to what First Peoples, river advocates, and many river scientists have always known: rivers are single, interconnected entities. Their health cannot be measured in isolated segments or by water volumes alone. Every part of a river’s journey matters.

To heal rivers, we need to transform our approach:

      • Rehabilitating Flows:
        Reducing diversion and extraction, protecting headwater streams, and ensuring environmental flows and energetic fluxes can reconnect habitats and sustain life.
      • Rehabilitating Valleys and Catchments:
        Re-vegetating riparian zones, managing farm dams, and redesigning stormwater infrastructure to mimic natural hydrology.
      • Addressing Pollution:
        Treating stormwater and wastewater to higher standards, trapping litter at its source, and regulating contaminants rigorously.
      • Building Resilience:
        Recognising rivers as climate refuges and ensuring planning responds to the intensifying pressures and impacts of climate change.
      • Reviving Connection:
        Re-establish the value of by supporting community stewardship, embracing Indigenous knowledge systems, and recognising rivers as living entities worthy of care and respect.

If we choose to see rivers not as resources to be used but as relatives to be nurtured, perhaps we can begin to repair the damage of colonisation, and the ravages of urbanisation and secure a future where rivers, ecosystems, and communities all thrive together.

One Living Entity, One Shared Responsibility

Each reach of a river is like an organ in a body: flowing water is the pulse carrying life forms, wetlands are kidneys filtering toxins, floodplains are lungs expanding and contracting with life-giving breath. When we wilfully take too much, hold back too much, or pollute what we should protect, we weaken that body.

But every action can also heal.

If we learn to walk alongside rivers as partners and teachers, guided by both ancient knowledge and modern science, we can begin to write a new story of connection, care, and rehabilitation.

 

What We Take from our rivers

When we take too much water from rivers, we drain their lifeblood.

Large catchment dams built to supply our cities dramatically reduce natural flows, severing the river’s ability to support ecosystems and cutting off vital connectivity in food webs between habitats. In drier periods, those impacts can mean the difference between survival and loss for many species.

Smaller instream catchment dams, often for irrigation or rural supply, add up too. They weaken the natural flow patterns, reduce connectivity between habitat pools, and leave urban water authorities needing an even higher share of catchment yields for drinking water. Meanwhile, irrigation takes from rivers at critical times, especially during dry seasons, when every drop counts, and can invert the natural flow patterns. Onstream irrigation weirs often block the very movement of fish and aquatic life that rivers need to stay alive.

To reduce these harms, we need strong leadership focussed on:

      • Greater efficiency in urban water use to reduce take.
      • Improved diversion practice that allows for continuity of food webs
      • Protecting headwater streams and expanding base and environmental flow allocations.
      • Transparent measurement and accounting of all water taken.
      • Phasing out instream weirs and onstream rural dams.
      • Buying back unsustainable water licences and those used solely for amenity.
      • Limiting the over allocation of groundwater takes that impact on stream flows

Each measure is a stitch in a torn fabric, helping rivers to flow, connect, and breathe again.

 

What We Keep from our rivers

Sometimes the damage comes not from what we take in just water, but from what we also hold back and divert.

Farm dams, especially in upper catchments, intercept significant volumes of water before they can nourish the river below. Their cumulative effect extends droughts, reduces seasonal flows, and quietly depletes headwater streams, the arteries of the system.

Plantations and groundwater extraction do something similar, but by reducing groundwater that would naturally seep into and sustain our waterways. Drawing groundwater downwards, lowers water tables and dries out wetlands, disrupting the contributions from groundwater that keep rivers alive during drought. On the surface the land can often appear green, but beneath, the river is struggling to maintain its life blood.

Even climate change is a kind of keeping — keeping too much heat, too much unpredictability, and not enough of the natural rainfall patterns that rivers and their ecosystems depend on. Reduced mean annual flows, longer droughts, hotter seasons, then sudden floods: these changes are stretching rivers beyond their sustainable limits.

To respond, we must adapt with care and foresight:

      • Recognise that many river systems are at breaking point of sustainability
      • Maintaining a fair share of flows for our Rivers
      • Enforce strong water take accounting for all users.
      • License and monitor groundwater and plantation water use.
      • Recognise rivers as climate refuges and support their rehabilitation.
      • Use carbon offset and nature positive funds to heal and protect riparian zones.
      • Design water infrastructure that supports ecological resilience, not just human demand.

      What We Put Into our rivers

      Then there’s what we pour into our rivers — often without a second thought.

      Treated wastewater might seem clean, but it still carries nutrients, hormones, pharmaceuticals, PFAS, and microplastics. These compounds alter ecosystems in subtle and not-so-subtle ways, from disrupting breeding cues to fueling algae blooms.

      Stormwater — from both urban and rural areas — rushes into rivers carrying litter, oil, chemicals, and silt. It scours stream beds and clouds waters, suffocating life. Agricultural runoff adds to the burden, bringing fertilisers, pesticides, and animal waste directly into aquatic ecosystems.

      Both new and aging septic systems in rural towns contribute — leaking into creeks, polluting water, making rivers less safe for people and wildlife alike.

      The path forward means prevention as much as cure:

          • Upgrade treatment plants and stormwater infrastructure and accelerate reuse.
          • Trap litter at the source.
          • Fence stock out of waterways.
          • Create buffer zones and filtration areas.
          • Regulate and monitor pollutants with the seriousness they deserve.

       

      The Wild Card: Invasive Species and Disconnection

      No living being can thrive in a hostile environment. Rivers face invaders — from carp and mosquito fish that devastate native species, to willows and blackberry bushes that choke banks and displace native vegetation. Left unmanaged, these species crowd out what rivers need to stay resilient.

      And perhaps just as dangerous is disconnection, not just of habitats, but of people.

      When we lose our connection to rivers, we stop seeing the damage. We stop caring. We forget that rivers are not background landscape features but living systems on which everything depends. Their value is lost from sight.

      We can rebuild that connection, through careful planning, thoughtful not destructive recreational use, and shared stewardship. By respecting the needs of the river, we learn how to live with it, not just off it.

       

      One Living Entity, One Shared Responsibility

      Each section of a river system plays a role, like organs in a body. Flowing water is the pulse. Vegetated banks and verges are the skin. Wetlands act like kidneys, filtering toxins. Floodplains are the lungs, expanding and contracting with life-giving breath.

      When we take too much, hold back too much, or pollute what we should protect, we weaken that living being. But just as every action can harm, every action can heal.

      If we choose to see rivers not as mere tradable resources, but as relatives, not as pipes, but as partners, then perhaps we can begin to care for them the way they deserve.

       

      A Deeper Dive listing how we degrade our waterways and how those impacts can be reduced

      Recognition of waterways as single living entities means fully understanding their incredible connectivity and recognizing and accounting for the fact that the impacts described below can have extraordinary reach throughout our waterway systems. Below is a more thorough accounting of those impacts.

      What we take from our rivers

      Large catchment dams on major waterways used for urban supplies

      Impact

      • Significantly reduced river flows
      • reduced ability to support dependent connected ecosystems
      • loss of connecting biodiversity between reaches

      Impact reduction

      • reduce dependence on natural water sources by urban water authorities
      • establish a worlds best culture and practice for irrigation communities
      • increase base flow and environmental flow entitlements in stressed systems
      • improved harvesting and diversion practices
      • support, protect and increase existing environmental flow allocations to fully secure adequate volumes for ecological health
      • ensure efficient use of water
      • scientifically robust sustainable diversion limits
      Catchment dams on named waterways waterways used for irrigation, stock and domestic, and aesthetics

      Impact

      • reduced ability to support dependent ecosystems
      • loss of connectivity between habitat pools, particularly in dry periods
      • massive impact on base and environmental flows
      • loss of urban water supply volumes requiring larger percentage of the river’s water stored in large reservoirs
      • Increasing take under climate change

      Impact reduction

      • regularly review licences for all private dams on named waterways
      • halt all new licence applications for dams on waterways in flow stressed catchments
      • increase base and environmental flow allocations in stressed systems
      • support and protect existing environmental flow allocations and passing flows by mandating volumes are passed though by divertors
      • ensure efficient use of water
      Water taken for irrigation

      Impact

      • reduced flows in low flow periods,
      • reduced ability to support and maintain dependent ecosystems,
      • loss of connectivity between pools in dry conditions,
      • irrigation diversion weirs preventing connectivity of ecosystems
      • normal seasonal flow regimes can be inverted

      Impact reduction

      • Increasing passing flow regimes of onstream irrigation dams
      • strong water take accounting for all users
      • scientifically robust sustainable diversion limits
      • open and accessible data repository
      • move to winter fill licences (will increase number of dams),
      • licence buybacks,
      • reassessing sustainable diversion limits,
      • removal of instream weirs replaced with off stream dams,
      • mandated bypass arrangements on private dams instead of trickle pipes
      • fish ladders on on-stream weirs
      Loss and degradation of riparian zones

      Impact

      • Loss of biological and debris inputs
      • loss of biodiversity and bio link values
      • loss of filtering capacity – increases in nutrients, sedimentation and pesticide loads reaching the waterways
      • loss of shading and temperature modification
      • bank destabilisation
      • loss of amenity

      Impact reduction

      • Improved crown frontage management
      • riparian management plans including where ecosystem services are purchased from landholders
      • protection of functioning buffer zones through adequate fencing
      • creation of managed buffer zones at greenfield development sites
      Use of flood plains for development

      Impact

      • Loss of critical flood storage – with increased flow transfer impacts
      • consequences of physically constraining rivers to limit flood risk of developments,
      • loss of wide buffers and wildlife corridors,
      • loss of floodplain ability to slow water velocity and modify peak flows,
      • reduction in movement of nutrient delivery on to floodplains

      Impact reduction

      • better planning controls to protect floodplains from encroachment
      • up to date flood mapping for Agency and Council decision making for regular and low frequency events
      Channelisation and piping

      Impact

      • complete loss of a functioning waterway
      • changes in flow regimes
      • limits water retention in the catchment
      • loss of riparian zones,
      • loss of instream habitat,
      • loss of migration pathways for native fish,
      • geomorphological changes through increased water velocities impacting downstream reaches
      • increased water velocities driving erosion and silting
      • exacerbates the urban stream syndrome

      Impact reduction

      • channel or pipe removal and rehabilitation
      • re-naturalisation
      • restrict new and removal of existing concrete sections
      ‘Sleeper’ water licence activation through sale on open market and other water market consequences

      Impact

      • less flows for rivers
      • water rights unbundled from land driving higher rural water prices

      Impact reduction

      • review un-bunding of water rights to land,
      • downstream trading only - with stepped reductions and local catchment/reach limits

      What we keep from our rivers

      Farm dams

      Impact

      • cumulatively, large volumes of water are being intercepted by farm dams reducing flows
      • inefficient water use and large losses of water in shallow dams
      • extending drought conditions in our waterways
      • reduced river flows particularly from impacted headwater streams

      Impact reduction

      • strong water take accounting and licencing
      • Higher degree of monitoring and surveillance
      • Stronger penalties for illegal takes or unauthorised dam construction
      • open and accessible data repository
      • develop policy and stronger legislative levers to address unchecked farm dam development
      • recognise drivers for dam development such as windfarm installation borrow pits
      • address monitoring and compliance failures and fund more robust compliance regimes
      • address ambiguity around what is a waterway
      Plantations

      Impact

      • lowering water tables and reducing baseflows?
      • reducing surface water runoff and yields
      • changing flow patterns in streams

      Impact reduction

      • enforce water demand/use modelling as part of plantation approval process
      • require water licences from transfers within the catchment so net water losses do not increase
      Groundwater extraction

      Impact

      • decreased base flow contributions into our waterways due to extractions causing lowered groundwater levels
      • drying out of wetlands (natural water retention in the landscape)
      • activation of acid sulphate soils

      Impact reduction

      • stronger water-take monitoring and accounting
      • open and accessible data repository
      • scientifically robust sustainable diversion limits
      • stronger monitoring and compliance regimes
      Climate change

      Impact

      • decreasing inflows into Victorian waterways
      • extended drying periods with interspersed with large flooding events

      impact reduction

      • establish larger base flow buffer entitlements in large reservoirs
      •  include building climate resilience into river systems in climate change mitigation initiatives
      • using existing water authority storages to assist rivers manage changing flow regimes, mandate an environmental services utility component for each piece of water infrastructure
      • recognise the value of waterways as climate refuges
      • remove impediments for using carbon offset funds toward riparian restoration
      • recognise capacity for carbon sequestration in riparian zones and for increasing water holding capacity of catchment soils

      What we put in our rivers

      Treated wastewater

      Impact

      • introduction of unwanted pollutants: excessive nutrients, surfactants, hormones, pharmaceuticals, PFAS, microplastics and heavy metals.
      • Bioaccumulation of toxic compounds.
      • Discharges of low dissolved oxygenated water often with temperatures differences.
      • Eutrophication and algal blooms
      • Unnatural flow regimes failing to provide triggering flows as breeding cues

      Impact reduction

      • bring forward treatment plant upgrades to an ecological support standard
      • treatment to drinking water standards to allow potable substitution and less water taken from our river systems.
      • storage to better mimic natural flow regimes.
      • Identify and control pollution sources before they get to treatment plants.
      Urban stormwater

      Impact

      • Massive impact of changed flows
      • introduction of unwanted and excessive nutrient loads, PFAS, litter, heavy metals and microplastics
      • loss of stream biological diversity
      • blue green algae outbreaks
      • impervious surfaces causing high volume and high velocity flows resulting in erosion, turbidity and unnatural flows

      Impact reduction

      • accelerate roll out and State budget funding of IWM plans
      • retention and treatment of urban stormwater runoff to Best Practices standards
      • effective litter traps with adequate maintenance
      • identification and elimination of point sources for pollutants
      • increasing stormwater levy for infill of intensification development when impervious surface ratios hit a particular limit beyond low fraction imperviousness limits (0.4)
      Rural stormwater from cleared catchments

      Impact

      • increased turbidity and excess nutrients
      • Loss of infiltration
      • increased sharp flows and loss of water retention in catchments
      • Loss of top and subsoils through increased sheet, rill and gully erosion
      • intensification of flood events

      Impact reduction

      • Increased soil health management programs to hold more water in the landscape
      • increasing riparian vegetation
      • increasing soil carbon
      • limit modifying or channelling of waterways
      • improve moisture retention in the catchments

        Impact

        • increased turbidity and excess nutrients
        • Loss of infiltration
        • increased sharp flows and loss of water retention in catchments
        • Loss of top and subsoils through increased sheet, rill and gully erosion
        • intensification of flood events

        Impact reduction

        • Increased soil health management programs to hold more water in the landscape
        • increasing riparian vegetation
        • increasing soil carbon
        • limit modifying or channelling of waterways
        • improve moisture retention in the catchments
      Agricultural runoff

      Impact

      • loss of soil organics through erosion
      • nutrient loads from fertilisers and stock waste
      • stock access to waterways – unfenced reaches
      • pesticides and other agricultural chemicals including PFAS flowing into waterways

      Impact reduction

      • Runoff retention techniques
      • increasing vegetation filtration zones
      • fencing riparian zones
      • identifying problem soils and terrain
      Unsewered Rural towns - septic system runoff

      Impact

      • polluted waterways
      • poor quality water for downstream stock, domestic take and environment
      • limiting recreational use

      Impact reduction

      • Strong enforcement of EPA controls at planning stages
      • better use of land capability assessment (LCA) information buffer widths of development and septic systems from watercourses
      • revegetated riparian zones for filtering
      • stronger regulation and compliance systems from Councils and EPA

        Impact

        • polluted waterways
        • poor quality water for downstream stock, domestic take and environment
        • limiting recreational use

        Impact reduction

        • Strong enforcement of EPA controls at planning stages
        • better use of land capability assessment (LCA) information buffer widths of development and septic systems from watercourses
        • revegetated riparian zones for filtering
        • stronger regulation and compliance systems from Councils and EPA
      Invasive species – both instream and terrestrial

      terrestrial – such as tradescantia, blackberry, willows, gorse
      in-stream – such as mosquito fish, carp,

      Impact

      • weeds crowding out of native species
      • poor quality water for downstream stock, domestic take and environment
      • willows causing erosion and migration blockages while limiting habitat of native species
      • bank destabilisation - carp
      • predation on native fish species – mosquito fish
      • limiting recreational use

      Impact reduction

      • greater funding for catchment wide coordinated weed eradication programs
      • targeted fish passages and inserting habitat structures
      • post drought opportunities for addressing invasive fish species

      All items in the one place.

      Complete List

      What we take from our rivers

      Large catchment dams on major waterways used for urban supplies

      Impact

      • Significantly reduced river flows
      • reduced ability to support dependent connected ecosystems
      • loss of connecting biodiversity between reaches

      Impact reduction

      • reduce dependence on natural water sources by urban water authorities
      • establish a worlds best culture and practice for irrigation communities
      • increase base flow and environmental flow entitlements in stressed systems
      • improved harvesting and diversion practices
      • support, protect and increase existing environmental flow allocations to fully secure adequate volumes for ecological health
      • ensure efficient use of water
      • scientifically robust sustainable diversion limits

      Catchment dams on named waterways waterways used for irrigation, stock and domestic, and aesthetics

      Impact

      • reduced ability to support dependent ecosystems
      • loss of connectivity between habitat pools, particularly in dry periods
      • massive impact on base and environmental flows
      • loss of urban water supply volumes requiring larger percentage of the river’s water stored in large reservoirs
      • Increasing take under climate change

      Impact reduction

      • regularly review licences for all private dams on named waterways
      • halt all new licence applications for dams on waterways in flow stressed catchments
      • increase base and environmental flow allocations in stressed systems
      • support and protect existing environmental flow allocations and passing flows by mandating volumes are passed though by divertors
      • ensure efficient use of water

      Water taken for irrigation

      Impact

      • reduced flows in low flow periods,
      • reduced ability to support and maintain dependent ecosystems,
      • loss of connectivity between pools in dry conditions,
      • irrigation diversion weirs preventing connectivity of ecosystems
      • normal seasonal flow regimes can be inverted

      Impact reduction

      • Increasing passing flow regimes of onstream irrigation dams
      • strong water take accounting for all users
      • scientifically robust sustainable diversion limits
      • open and accessible data repository
      • move to winter fill licences (will increase number of dams),
      • licence buybacks,
      • reassessing sustainable diversion limits,
      • removal of instream weirs replaced with off stream dams,
      • mandated bypass arrangements on private dams instead of trickle pipes
      • fish ladders on on-stream weirs

      Loss and degradation of riparian zones

      Impact

      • Loss of biological and debris inputs
      • loss of biodiversity and bio link values
      • loss of filtering capacity – increases in nutrients, sedimentation and pesticide loads reaching the waterways
      • loss of shading and temperature modification
      • bank destabilisation
      • loss of amenity

      Impact reduction

      • Improved crown frontage management
      • riparian management plans including where ecosystem services are purchased from landholders
      • protection of functioning buffer zones through adequate fencing
      • creation of managed buffer zones at greenfield development sites

       

      Use of flood plains for development

      Impact

      • Loss of critical flood storage – with increased flow transfer impacts
      • consequences of physically constraining rivers to limit flood risk of developments,
      • loss of wide buffers and wildlife corridors,
      • loss of floodplain ability to slow water velocity and modify peak flows,
      • reduction in movement of nutrient delivery on to floodplains

      Impact reduction

      • better planning controls to protect floodplains from encroachment
      • up to date flood mapping for Agency and Council decision making for regular and low frequency events

      Channelisation and piping

      Impact

      • complete loss of a functioning waterway
      • changes in flow regimes
      • limits water retention in the catchment
      • loss of riparian zones,
      • loss of instream habitat,
      • loss of migration pathways for native fish,
      • geomorphological changes through increased water velocities impacting downstream reaches
      • increased water velocities driving erosion and silting
      • exacerbates the urban stream syndrome

      Impact reduction

      • channel or pipe removal and rehabilitation
      • re-naturalisation
      • restrict new and removal of existing concrete sections

       

      ‘Sleeper’ water licence activation through sale on open market and other water market consequences

      Impact

      • less flows for rivers
      • water rights unbundled from land driving higher rural water prices

      Impact reduction

      • review un-bunding of water rights to land,
      • downstream trading only - with stepped reductions and local catchment/reach limits

       

      What we keep from our rivers

      Farm dams

      Impact

      • cumulatively, large volumes of water are being intercepted by farm dams reducing flows
      • inefficient water use and large losses of water in shallow dams
      • extending drought conditions in our waterways
      • reduced river flows particularly from impacted headwater streams

      Impact reduction

      • strong water take accounting and licencing
      • Higher degree of monitoring and surveillance
      • Stronger penalties for illegal takes or unauthorised dam construction
      • open and accessible data repository
      • develop policy and stronger legislative levers to address unchecked farm dam development
      • recognise drivers for dam development such as windfarm installation borrow pits
      • address monitoring and compliance failures and fund more robust compliance regimes
      • address ambiguity around what is a waterway

      Plantations

      Impact

      • lowering water tables and reducing baseflows?
      • reducing surface water runoff and yields
      • changing flow patterns in streams

      Impact reduction

      • enforce water demand/use modelling as part of plantation approval process
      • require water licences from transfers within the catchment so net water losses do not increase

      Groundwater extraction

      Impact

      • decreased base flow contributions into our waterways due to extractions causing lowered groundwater levels
      • drying out of wetlands (natural water retention in the landscape)
      • activation of acid sulphate soils

      Impact reduction

      • stronger water-take monitoring and accounting
      • open and accessible data repository
      • scientifically robust sustainable diversion limits
      • stronger monitoring and compliance regimes

       

      Climate change

      Impact

      • decreasing inflows into Victorian waterways
      • extended drying periods with interspersed with large flooding events

      impact reduction

      • establish larger base flow buffer entitlements in large reservoirs
      •  include building climate resilience into river systems in climate change mitigation initiatives
      • using existing water authority storages to assist rivers manage changing flow regimes, mandate an environmental services utility component for each piece of water infrastructure
      • recognise the value of waterways as climate refuges
      • remove impediments for using carbon offset funds toward riparian restoration
      • recognise capacity for carbon sequestration in riparian zones and for increasing water holding capacity of catchment soils

      What we put into our rivers

      Treated wastewater

      Impact

      • introduction of unwanted pollutants: excessive nutrients, surfactants, hormones, pharmaceuticals, PFAS, microplastics and heavy metals.
      • Bioaccumulation of toxic compounds.
      • Discharges of low dissolved oxygenated water often with temperatures differences.
      • Eutrophication and algal blooms
      • Unnatural flow regimes failing to provide triggering flows as breeding cues

      Impact reduction

      • bring forward treatment plant upgrades to an ecological support standard
      • treatment to drinking water standards to allow potable substitution and less water taken from our river systems.
      • storage to better mimic natural flow regimes.
      • Identify and control pollution sources before they get to treatment plants.

        Urban stormwater

        Impact

        • Massive impact of changed flows
        • introduction of unwanted and excessive nutrient loads, PFAS, litter, heavy metals and microplastics
        • loss of stream biological diversity
        • blue green algae outbreaks
        • impervious surfaces causing high volume and high velocity flows resulting in erosion, turbidity and unnatural flows

        Impact reduction

        • accelerate roll out and State budget funding of IWM plans
        • retention and treatment of urban stormwater runoff to Best Practices standards
        • effective litter traps with adequate maintenance
        • identification and elimination of point sources for pollutants
        • increasing stormwater levy for infill of intensification development when impervious surface ratios hit a particular limit beyond low fraction imperviousness limits (0.4)

        Rural stormwater from cleared catchments

        Impact

        • increased turbidity and excess nutrients
        • Loss of infiltration
        • increased sharp flows and loss of water retention in catchments
        • Loss of top and subsoils through increased sheet, rill and gully erosion
        • intensification of flood events

        Impact reduction

        • Increased soil health management programs to hold more water in the landscape
        • increasing riparian vegetation
        • increasing soil carbon
        • limit modifying or channelling of waterways
        • improve moisture retention in the catchments

        Agricultural runoff

        Impact

        • loss of soil organics through erosion
        • nutrient loads from fertilisers and stock waste
        • stock access to waterways – unfenced reaches
        • pesticides and other agricultural chemicals including PFAS flowing into waterways

        Impact reduction

        • Runoff retention techniques
        • increasing vegetation filtration zones
        • fencing riparian zones
        • identifying problem soils and terrain

          Unsewered Rural towns - septic system runoff

          Impact

          • polluted waterways
          • poor quality water for downstream stock, domestic take and environment
          • limiting recreational use

          Impact reduction

          • Strong enforcement of EPA controls at planning stages
          • better use of land capability assessment (LCA) information buffer widths of development and septic systems from watercourses
          • revegetated riparian zones for filtering
          • stronger regulation and compliance systems from Councils and EPA

          Invasive species – both instream and terrestrial

          terrestrial – such as tradescantia, blackberry, willows, gorse
          in-stream – such as mosquito fish, carp,

          Impact

          • weeds crowding out of native species
          • poor quality water for downstream stock, domestic take and environment
          • willows causing erosion and migration blockages while limiting habitat of native species
          • bank destabilisation - carp
          • predation on native fish species – mosquito fish
          • limiting recreational use

          Impact reduction

          • greater funding for catchment wide coordinated weed eradication programs
          • targeted fish passages and inserting habitat structures
          • post drought opportunities for addressing invasive fish species

           

           

          Other considerations

          Increasing people’s connection to our waterways without increasing the impact of visitation