The $5 million Northern Rivers Watershed Initiative was announced at Boatharbour today by Member for Lismore Janelle Saffin along with Rous County Council's Anthony Acret, the Casino Food Coop's Joseph Leven, Whian Whian Lancare's Jeremy Stewart and local landholder/farmer Garry Lambert.

The $5 million was a NSW Government election promise to work across some 8,220 square kilometres, covering the Local Government Areas of, Lismore City Council, Richmond Valley Council, and Kyogle, Tweed, Byron, and Ballina Shire Councils. 

The partnership will work with landholders to revegetate and undertake weed control in catchment areas, improve soil health, address water quality in floodplain areas, increase water filtration and storage, and work to slow water flows in catchments. The works are set to commence in October 2024.

The initiative is based on the application of a range of natural flood management techniques across the Northern Rivers that can work to restore or mimic the natural functions of the rivers, floodplains and the wider catchments to help reduce flooding and generate a range of water quality and catchment health benefits. 

Key projects to be undertaken as part of the Watershed Initiative include:

• Working with macadamia farmers in the Emigrant and Maguires Creek catchments on orchard floor management, water-sensitive drainage and soil stabilisation ($0.5M).
• Strategic improvements in waterway condition to establish self-sustaining vegetated buffer zones that generate water quality and ecological benefits – this will feature weed removal, off-stream water, cattle exclusion, fencing, stabilisation of riverbanks and planting of 100,000 trees across the region ($2.5M).
• Redesigned floodplain drainage to meet contemporary standards - working with landholders to conduct on-ground works within Keith Hall drainage system, South Ballina, minimising environmental impacts from floodplain drainage infrastructure whilst maintaining levels of service ($1.5M).  
• Landscape hydration program: using natural flood management techniques to slow flows, retain soil fertility, and reduce runoff in rural catchments ($0.5M). 

Janelle Saffin said this initiative is not considered to be the flood mitigation solution but rather plays a role, along with the completed CSIRO study, in forming that final plan.

"It's about water quality. It's about the general health of the rivers, and it's also looking at how we can just do better with our water," Ms Saffin said.

Rous County Council's (RCC) Anthony Acret said they have been chasing funding for five years. In 2019, RCC prepared the proposal and adopted the proposal, which was then adopted by the Northern Rivers Joint Organisation of Councils.

"Janelle has been out there trying to secure funding since that time. It was a large-scale strategy. That really is based on the premise of natural flood management, sometimes called nature-based solutions. So, these sorts of approaches recognise that there's no one-size-fits-all answer to the changes we've made to our catchments.

"There's been a lot of community concern about the condition, the eco health condition of the river for a long period of time, and of course, that was magnified by the impacts of the 2022 floods. These nature-based solutions really work in many ways to try and try and deliver multiple outcomes.

"We're trying to identify works that can deal with the changes we've made to the catchment hydrology. So, we can look up and see the wonderful Gondwana rain forests on the on the ranges, but you can also see the large clearing we've done to our catchments and our waterways. And obviously that's changed the way water moves through our catchments, and that's a hard thing to reveal. We can't just change that with a project of this scale, but what we can do is make a start and work in these ways that can demonstrate the sorts of changes we can make.

(Some more established farming practices on the other side of Garry's property)

"These sorts of works increase infiltration of water into the soil, into the groundwater. It increases storage. It holds water up in the landscape, and it slows the movement of water through the landscape. So, all of these works are trying to achieve multiple benefits."

When achieved, the result is also improved productivity for the agricultural sector through four key program areas:

1. Soil health improvement to increase infiltration and improves productivity.
2. Riparian vegetation, which is good for habitat and water quality
3. Coastal drainage networks to reduce the environmental risks associated with acid water and Blackwater
4. Landscape Rehydration

Landowner/farmer Garry Lambert pointed to a paddock behind him, saying, "You don't have to be a scientist to look down at that creek and realise the degradation that's happened over many many years.

"Across this whole area, there's now a movement, and it's amongst landholders as well as government and members of the community, to bring some vitality back to these waterways and make them much more productive. Regenerative farming practices, which is what my wife and I try and practice around here, or we're moving towards. This is just a perfect way of making sure that we can be sustainable, that we maximise the capacity of the land, but still keeping, importantly, still keeping production happening because we still need to feed people, we still need to have employment for people, but we need to manage the environment."

"So, we really do get that triple bottom line here, where it's good for the business, it's good for the government, and it's certainly good for the community at large."

When asked to explain what will happen on Garry's property and what the benefits will be to the community, Anthony Acret said, "This reach of river is really important from a Rous perspective, and from a regional perspective, because Rous operates a water supply source five, six or seven k's down from here. So this little water course here discharges into the Wilsons River and flows down through Boatharbour. So, it's actually a source of our regional water supply.

"What we see in a lot of these floodplain areas, like I say, we've got clear catchments and cleared waterways, and we've had erosion in the river. And, so over time, there's a lot of incision, so we lose a lot of sediment out of these systems into the river, which obviously is poor water quality, poor for catchment health, poor for habitat. A whole range of range of issues, plus Garry's losing sediment off his place out of there."

"What that looks like here is trying to stabilise that through these natural sequence approaches, which is trying to retain more water as it flows through. It won't hold water, it won't prevent water from moving through, but it will just slow it. So in this system here, we're looking to put in a series of leaky weirs or permeable structures in the waterway.

"It'll create a habitat in its kind, it'll help sediment fall-out, it will help clarify water quality and provide Gary with a reliable source of water as well. To clarify that water for the use of the cattle, that's better water quality for him, and it's better water quality discharging into the river.

"That will be complemented by a range of planting and fencing; Garry's got a farm plan that he's working out with fences and cattle access for water and all those things."

That farm plan may involve short-term and long-term fencing, off-stream watering points for his cattle, but is a case-by-case basis due to the complexities involved with flooded environments.

One of the challenges facing Anthony and his team is to monitor key learnings through measuring water quality.

"Measuring water quality is a difficult thing because there are so many variables, but it is important that we do identify things that we can measure, that we know make a difference. So, that will be part of what we're doing is trying to design a monitoring and reporting framework that is sensitive to the sorts of changes, and hopefully that's contributing to improved water quality.

Janelle Saffin had the final say when she declared the slogan of the day, "Slow the flow."