Roads and Drains Water Quality Monitoring Project
A collaborative monitoring project between the LDC Project , Whitsunday Regional Council ( WRC ) and Fruition Environmental enabled runoff , water quality and sediment loss learnings to be derived from unsealed roads within the BBB catchment . Roads interrupt the natural geomorphic , hydrological , and ecological processes of the surrounding landscape and can contribute to erosion issues in the GBR catchments . The final project report by Fruition Environmental ( Claussen and Telfer , 2021 ), highlights the value of this monitoring as unsealed road networks and their associated impact and connectivity with the surrounding hydrological networks remain an understudied driver of declining water quality within the GBR catchments . This project investigated the difference between erosion and sediment delivery from V-drains and flat bottom drains .
Six sites were located along a ~ 1 km stretch of Emu Plains Road which runs parallel to the Bowen River , approximately 200-500 m from the riverbank ( Figure 40 ). Adjacent to this road , a V shaped table drain was used on one side , and a flat bottom table drain on the other . Both table drains were drained using corresponding V and flat bottomed mitre drains .
The paired site sampling design meant that each ‘ treatment ’ site had a complementary ‘ control ’ site on the opposite side of the road . The three control sites were located at the V shaped outlet ( mitre drain ) of the V table drain , and the three treatment sites at the outlet of the flat bottom drains . The monitoring equipment was installed ~ 5 m from the road as per council requirements .
Figure 40 . A schematic diagram of two paired project sites showing the road drainage structures , location of monitoring equipment in the mitre drain , and direction of flow ( photo taken December 2020 ) ( Fruition Environmental , 2021 ).
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