This Google Earth presentation by the Concerned Waterways Alliance examines the Latrobe River and the Gippsland Lakes as a single, connected ecological system, shaped by decisions made across the entire catchment from alpine headwaters to the coastal entrance.
The work has been developed in collaboration with key Gippsland-based member organisations of the Alliance, including:
A long-standing community group advocating for the ecological health, water quality and Ramsar values of the Gippsland Lakes system.
A community network focused on protecting and restoring the Latrobe River, with particular attention to environmental flows, water allocation, and catchment impacts from mining and infrastructure.
A regional environmental organisation working across Gippsland on biodiversity protection, climate resilience and sustainable land and water management.
Despite perceptions of water abundance, the Latrobe system is among the most heavily regulated in Victoria. Climate change, major storages, irrigation networks, urban supply, power generation, dredging at Lakes Entrance, and coal mining have collectively reduced freshwater inflows and altered natural sediment and salinity processes.
The Gippsland Lakes are internationally recognised under the Ramsar Convention for their wetlands, fish nursery habitat, migratory waterbirds, and cultural values. Many of these values now show clear signs of decline, including salinity intrusion, wetland vegetation dieback, shoreline erosion, and reduced system resilience.
A central focus of the presentation is the Latrobe Valley coal mines, Hazelwood, Yallourn and Loy Yang, and proposals to rehabilitate these sites by filling large open-cut mine voids with water. The scale of water required, long-term evaporation losses, and the instability of engineered river diversions mean these proposals carry serious, system-wide implications for the Latrobe River and the Gippsland Lakes.
The film highlights why managing rivers, lakes, mines and infrastructure in isolation is no longer viable, and why cumulative impacts must be assessed across the whole system.
Key message:
The ecological decline of the Gippsland Lakes is not inevitable. Protecting this internationally significant landscape requires restoring freshwater inflows, rebalancing consumptive demands, reassessing water-intensive mine rehabilitation strategies, and governing the catchment as a single living system.
Related submissions by the Concerned Waterways Alliance:
CWA submission on Latrobe Valley mine licence applications
CWA submission on EnergyAustralia’s draft Yallourn Declared Mine Rehabilitation Plan
CWA submission on the economic value and pricing of surface water for mine rehabilitation
CWA submission to the Draft Hazelwood Declared Mine Rehabilitation Plan