Waterway restoration field trip - what lessons and solutions can we see?

What is on offer?

This field trip is to 3 waterway restoration projects along the Bremer River and in the Warril Creek catchment. With the hosts and guests you will hear and see what is involved in waterways restoration projects, what works and what are the challenges. Plus in this network setting plenty of time and questions and a chance meet experienced practitioners in this craft of “waterway resilience building”.

Background

“Good health” of our catchments is a vital need if land holders, communities and the broader environment are to benefit from the suite of ecosystem services that they can provide locally and to downstream neighbours and communities. In SEQ a focus on waterway health, particular water quality and more recently flooding, has been a long term focus ever since the 1990’s. However, various management, land use practices, and now climatic extremes have seen waterway condition and functions deteriorate.

To counterbalance the declining trend, various groups have undertaken waterway rehabilitation and restoration activities across the catchments. But to do this what is involved, for example:

• How do you design solutions and what waterway and flow factors are you trying to combat?

• How do you know that your solution will work for this waterway reach?

• Which catchments or waterways are the priority?

• What sort of structural efforts and interventions are needed?

• Who pays for this work?

• How do you get landholder agreement to undertake this work?

• Are there any regulatory requirements to work in a waterway?

• Plus... many more questions

Your invitation

Regardless of your background and current level of involvement in waterway and catchment management, you are invited to join on this half day filed trip where we aim to explore some of the issue listed above.

More importantly we aim to offer you:

1. Inspection opportunity of a range of water restoration techniques and methodologies

2. Expert led discussion on what was involved, what worked and lessons learnt from visiting three different sites

3. Time for you to ask questions on why waterway restoration is important for you and what do you need to know to help better promote the need for this work or to be actively involved in an aspect of this catchment restoration work

You will be looking at three contrasting sites where:

• Bank stabilisation is a focus;

• Technique with log jams, vetiver grass, pile-fields are involved;

• Energy management is considered a reach and site scale

• Challenges in high energy gravelly systems will be outlined

Plus as a broader topic, there is a key question of what is the scope to upscale from these reach based projects to catchment wide interventions. By increasing the geographic spread and scale of projects to reduce impacts does this result in the cumulative benefits for downstream communities and waterway habitat being exponentially increased?

Once you register for the event, we can then send you specific details of this trip starting in Ipswich, up into the Warril Creek catchment near Aratula and then concluding with a debrief at a pub back in Ipswich.

Your hosts and quest speakers for the day

This event is being organised by the combine efforts of the Flood Community of Practice (Flood CoP) network and the Queensland Branch of the River Basin Management Society (RBMS). Also involved are colleagues from:

• Healthy Land and Water - Margie Dickson, Mark Waud

• Resilient Rivers - Council on Mayors (SEQ) – Anna Shera

• Ipswich City Council - Jack McCann and Phil Smith

Logistic of the day

1. After arriving at the meeting location from 11:00am for a 11:30am start (Shapcott Park, Coalfalls, Ipswich) and having various introductions and a local inspection;

2. We will be travelling to the various sites by car, and to minimise congestion and for respect for our landholder hosts we aim to car pool as we leave the location at Ipswich heading to Aratula. The site at Ipswich will be a suitable location to leave your car for those car pooling with others.

3. At the end of the day, around 4:30pm, we will be reconvening to a pub in Ipswich to debrief and network further with drinks and nibbles. On the return trip we will pass by the meeting point to allow people to pick up their cars. The wrap up is estimated to be around 6:00pm and for those that are interested they can stay for extended networking.

If you are in Brisbane and would like to have a lift to Ipswich, please tick that option with your pickup are on the registration.

We will be providing a package lunch when we leave the site at Ipswich, plus some refreshments when out on site.

Do bring a hat, your water bottle, comfortable outdoor clothing and some covered footwear for walking around creeks across paddocks.