As part of our program to protect rivers, we’ve developed an Urban Rivers and Wetlands workshop series, an initiative practically supporting community organisations and advocates looking after local waterways. The workshop content has been designed around feedback from a range of urban waterways friends groups, community organisations, and advocates.
The workshops will explore topics like restoration practices, land use planning, stormwater management, and opportunities and constraints in the ownership of the land surrounding urban rivers. Our aim is to provide community groups protecting our rivers with the tools they need to engage in and advocate for better protection of our precious waterways.
Barwon River Workshop Series
From July-August 2019, we ran workshops in conjunction with Friends of the Barwon (FoB), around reforming river governance for the Barwon-Leigh-Moorabool River system in preparation for engagement with the Barwon River Ministerial Advisory Committee (MAC). These workshops focused on providing a forum to draw upon the experience and expertise of various groups, individuals and organisations.
As a result, we were able to bring together clear law and policy reform recommendations to deliver to the Barwon River MAC. We’ll continue to work closely with FoB to feed into the MAC’s public engagement process and are confident our contribution will lead to positive outcomes for the Barwon-Leigh-Moorabool River.
North East Link
We have been representing the Yarra Riverkeeper Association (YRKA) at the public hearings into the Northeast Link Project (NELP) – a project the YRKA alleges will cause irreparable damage to the Yarra River system. NELP is the largest infrastructure project in Victorian history, anticipated to cost around $16b. The project is the subject of an Inquiry being held before an Inquiry and Advisory Committee over more than two months of hearings. The YRKA made submissions to the Inquiry and we have attended to examine witnesses and will be calling evidence on urban ecology. We will be making submissions on behalf of YRKA on the project, its design and ultimately its acceptability on 10 September.