Restoring creeks in Sydney's west

South Creek, running through Sydney's rapidly urbanising west, has been considered one of Australia's most degraded waterways.

But that dubious status is changing.

In 2004 the Hawkesbury Nepean Catchment Management Authority (CMA) and Greening Australia developed a partnership proposal for a South Creek River Recovery project across eight local government areas.

"The project involved bringing us together with government organisations, catchment management bodies, landholders, business leaders and the community to start fixing some of the problems that lead to polluted rivers," said Greening Australia Program Manager, Glen Klatovsky.

Funding

The Australian Government provided around $145,400 towards the project in 2005 through the Hawkesbury Nepean CMA. Other partners include the New South Wales Department of Planning, Blacktown and Penrith City Councils, Winten Property Group, Briat Water and a number of other corporate and community bodies.

The project is part of a 10-year national River Recovery program focussing on nine icon rivers across Australia.

Activities

"Interest in this project has exceeded our most optimistic expectations," Glen said.

"For an effort that's been going for a little over a year we've notched up some great successes.

"Our River Blitz effort in May 2006 saw eight Green Corps teams working for a week on a cattle grazing property in western Sydney, alongside scores of employees from big businesses, to rehabilitate Little Creek which drains into South Creek.

"They put in 12,000 native plants, erected four kilometres of fencing, rehabilitated 750 metres of native bush and installed engineering works.

"We're also doing some environment work with CSR in one of the largest industrial developments in the Sydney Basin, including developing a 210 hectare bushland corridor between Ropes and South Creek."

Achievements

To date the South Creek project has:

• planted 100,000 trees;
• rehabilitated more that 60 hectares of bush;
• undertaken further work on more than eight kilometres of creekline; and
• held over 12 community events.

Commitments already made for the future include:

• A project to work on four major urban creeks entering the South Creek catchment - Breakfast, Bungarribee, Claremont and Werrington Creeks. Activities will include creek bank plantings, engineering works and community events.
• A 10-year program between Landcom and Australand to rehabilitate the Second Ponds Creek urban development site in Western Sydney.

"The South Creek River Recovery project is now one of our showcases," said Glen.

More information

• Glen Klatovsky, Greening Australia Program Manager: gklatovsky@ga.org.au

Australian Government NRM Team
GPO Box 787
Canberra ACT 2601 Australia
1800 552 008 (toll-free)

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Caring for our Country is an Australian Government initiative jointly administered by the Australian Government departments of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry and the Environment, Water, Heritage and the Arts