BURDEKIN DRY TROPICS NATURAL RESOURCE MANAGEMENT PLAN 2016-2026
60 however, it will inevitably increase overall nutrient loads as waste volumes increase with predicted population growth.
The Black Ross WQIP identifies a wide range of water quality improvement actions across urban, peri-urban and rural areas, including establishing a Total Water Cycle Management Plan( TWCMP) linking stormwater, wastewater, potable water and waterway management. For more detailed targets and outcomes refer to the Black Ross( Townsville) WQIP.
2. Burdekin WQIP
The Burdekin WQIP 2009 was updated in 2015-2016 with the latest scientific data and information. It was also expanded to cover urban as well as rural areas and to cover all catchments in the Burdekin Dry Tropics region; linking to the Black Ross( Townsville) WQIP and including the Don River catchment.
The Burdekin WQIP identifies eight catchments comprising water resources in various conditions, and a range of current land management practices. Distinct areas of land use occur in our region: grazing in the upper catchments, grains in the Suttor, horticulture in the Don and irrigated sugarcane cropping in the Lower Burdekin. Each land use raises different water quality concerns, priorities being erosion from grazing lands causing high loads of fine suspended sediment, and irrigated cropping lands in the Lower Burdekin associated with high levels of dissolved nutrient loads and significant levels of herbicide loads in freshwater and coastal ecosystems( Brodie, et al., 2013).
The Burdekin WQIP( 2016) identified grazing land areas in the Bowen Broken Bogie, Lower Burdekin and Don catchments as contributing significantly to gully, stream bank and hillslope erosion: Bowen River, Bogie River, Pelican Creek, Little Bowen River, Burdekin Delta, Burdekin River( below dam), Glenmore Creek, Rosella Creek and Don River subcatchments( Waterhouse, et al., 2016). Many of these areas are considered to be in poor land condition( refer to Part B – Land). Tracing data indicates that the Upper Burdekin and Bowen Broken Bogie catchments have the highest rate of kilograms per hectare erosion derived from exposed subsoils, highlighting a significant loss of fine sediment into the waterways( Lewis, et al., 2015).
The WQIP promotes increasing the community’ s capacity to implement best management practices to reduce hillslope, stream and gully erosion, by maintaining, improving and restoring river frontage, and soil and pasture condition, as well as undertaking pest and weed control. For sugar production lands the WQIP also promotes reducing excess irrigation, nitrogen surplus, and herbicide and sediment losses. For more detailed targets and outcomes please refer to the Burdekin WQIP.
The most recent 2014 Reef Report Card identified that our region has made substantial progress towards the Reef Plan targets. The Paddock to Reef Program modelling predicts that we have made moderate to very good progress toward load reduction targets for our region’ s main pollutants of nitrogen, phosphorus, sediment and PSII herbicides( Queensland Government, 2015). Between 2008 and 2013 the following reductions in anthropogenic loads( estimated using the Source Catchments modelling by Dougall, et al., 2014) were estimated for the Burdekin Region: Total suspended sediment( TSS) 16 per cent, Dissolved Inorganic Nitrogen( DIN) 14 per cent, Particulate Nitrogen( PN) 14 per cent, Particulate Phosphorus( PP) 15 per cent and photosystem II inhibiting herbicides( PSII herbicides) 13 per cent( NQ Dry Tropics, 2016). Further reductions have also been estimated between 2013 and 2014( Queensland Government, 2015), but not enough to meet the Reef Plan 2018 targets.
In our region, the existing significant collaborative effort, backed by investment, to achieve the management targets for the Burdekin catchment, include applying improved land and water management techniques similar to
Pandora Reef is an inshore reef in the northern waters of our region near Palm Island. It comprises some corals in the vicinity of 200-300 years of age. The photo below shows a 120 year old Porites coral which was bleached during the 2016 bleaching event. In clear water it has the potential to recover, however the fine sediments in the water at Pandora is smothering the coral. A healthy Porites produces mucous to sloughoff fine sediments but under the stress of coral bleaching it has insufficient energy reserves to do this and is consequently dying. Reducing sediment inputs into the coastal waters can help the resilience of corals to recover from other threats such as bleaching events.
GBRMPA, 2016
WATER