$150,000 funding granted to Biolinks Alliance in Coliban Water vs. EPA court case
A stream restoration project developed by Biolinks Alliance, the community around the Edgecombe region near Kyneton with the Dja Dja Wurrung has been awarded funding and will be a great first step towards the implementation of the Greenhill to Black Hill Biolink Plan.
Image source (Facebook: Sallyanne Craig)
The funding has come from a court decision to penalise Coliban Water for multiple river pollution offences – the court awarding Biolinks Alliance the funding to work with the community to empower them to take remedial actions in their part of the Campaspe river. The $150,000 of funding will go to rehabilitating a stretch of Snipes Creek – a tributary of the Campapse and a stream that Coliban Water have used to dump excess waste water into the Campaspe river for many years.
Biolinks has been working with the passionate landholders in the region on a plan to restore ecological health and connectivity between Greenhill and Black Hill. Rivers are natural landscape connectors and are one of the targets the community want to focus on in this restoration project.
The river in this area has been heavily impacted through years of being treated as a sewer, stock grazing and weed invasion. The community have fought hard to raise attention of ongoing and worsening pollution levels. They want to see it returned to a healthy, functional and biodiverse river once again.
Biolinks historical work in the region
Landowners in the area were concerned about the decline in the health of the natural environment they were witnessing happen around them. Despite years of efforts they’d been taking to restore & protect the Campaspe River & grassy woodlands of the area.
The woodlands and old trees around them were slowly disappearing as the old trees aged and were not replaced by new growth. Koalas were no longer around.
In the winter of 2019 Huntly Barton and other landholders witnessed alarming things; cows aborting calves on mass, stock doing poorly. The river water they once relied upon for their stock was no longer fit for stock consumption – nor household as it was once used.
“This farm has been owned by two generations of my family plus my children were bought up on this property. We have used the river water in licence for stock and domestic purposes for over 50 years. Myself, my siblings and my children grew up along this river where we learnt to swim, fish, bird watch, spy on platypus, shoot foxes and rabbits and was our recreational ground when young. This is now lost.”
The farmers raised the issues with the EPA and investigations lead to determining that the local water authority, Coliban Water had been illegally releasing polluted wastewater into the River, with their water treatment plant not able to accommodate the waste from the towns rapid expansion – and the expansion of the Hardwicks abattoir in Kyneton.
The EPA charged Coliban Water with three offences of breaching a license stipulation, one of causing pollution and one of causing an environmental hazard.
Huntly believes that “If our immediate community had not brought Coliban Water to task l am sure this release would have occurred with no notice. This has been an enormous breach of trust for me as l had always held public authorities such as Coliban Water in high esteem.”
The disaster unfolding in the river galvanised landholders to do more for the environment. They approached Biolinks Alliance to help them restore and reconnect the landscape between Greenhill to Blackhill. The Campaspe and its tributary creeks (Snipes, Wards) – run though the middle of the area and are a key feature – with rivers acting as natural landscape connectors and refuges in dry times as well as harbouring their own unique biodiversity.
Our approach to restoration
The local community with the lands Tradtional Owners the Dja Dja Warrung and Taungurung Clans will exclude stock, through fencing, remove the non-indigenous weedy vegetation and undertake deliberative revegetation of riparian and floodplain vegetation along 1 km section (approx 3.5 ha) of the creek. The project will develop a plan for instream restoration and second stage rehabilitation of the entire creek to contribute to restoring the health and biodiveristy of the waterways in the region and re-establish ecological connectivity between Greenhill and Blackhill.
The project improves the environment by undertaking measures to improve the condition of a reach of a stream flowing into the Campaspe river, Snipes Creek. The creek would have once supported a riparian woodlands, with a Eucalypt overstorey and diverse grass and sedge understorey. The creek would have once provided an imporant habitat for threatened species and ecological connection between the Black Hill area and the Campaspe River. Years of stock grazing and waste water input into the stream from the Kyneton water treatment works has all but removed the native riparian vegetation and it has been replaced by invasive species including gorse, hawthorn (Crataegus monogyna) and willows (Salix spp.) and Texas Needle Grass (Nassella leucotricha). The project will fence a reach of the stream to remove stock from the watercourse, remove weed species and revegetate the riparian and adjoining floodplain with components of its original native vegetation (including red gum Eucalyptus camaldulensis, river bottle brush, wattles, poa and sedges including Common Tussock Grass (Poa labillardierei) Kangaroo Grass (Themeda triandra) and a range of tall sedges (Carex appressa, C. tereticaulis, C. gaudichaudiana and C. iynx). The works will be maintained beyond the end of the project by the weed removal contractor undertaking follow-up works for 2 subsequent years. A plan will be developed for second stage works along the creek, which will additionally identify and aim to support any ongoing maintainance required beyond the life of this project that is out of the scope of the landholders ability to implement themselves.
The project enables the affected residents to witness, and if they wish partake in the implementation of (through participating in a revegetation day and field day) the restoration of a part of Snipes creek traversing private property, visible from Barbower Road. The project will be delivered in partnership with Dja Dja Wurrung by the Djandak Onground Works Crew, providing a great opportuntiy for Djaara people to work on country. In several sections the river is the boarder between Dja Dja Wurrung and Taungurung country. The Taungurung will be invited to participate in the restoration project as they would like to giving them the opportunity to connect with country and share knowledge on restoration techniques. A Cultural Sharing day may possibly be held bringing together dialogue and learning about traditional perspectives in land and water management to help forge ways forward for holistic approaches to river use and management.