A waterway can be a creek, brook, river, or stream, and may include a lake, estuary or inlet at its base. Waterways also include their floodplains and wetland systems that overflow into rivers, as well as any lakes or swamps that are filled (mainly) by streams rather than shallow groundwater.
Any waterway in Western Australia is likely to be owned and managed by a number of different landowners and organisations. The Department of Water is the lead organisation ensuring the management of waterways in Western Australia.
Cooperative relationships in the community are essential for good decision-making that sustains the health of a waterway. This is because:
- the variety of land uses in a catchment means there will be differing perspectives on the management of a waterway
- the potential to manage all waterways directly through legislation is relatively small
- Upstream land use impacts have downstream effects
A key aspect of sound waterway management is to ensure that the range of views, interests and aspirations we hold for our waterways are identified and managed.
Our Role
Management and protection to prevent and minimise degradation of waterways
This is the highest priority for the Department of Water as it includes proactive policy development and planning, management and assessment to ensure waterway condition is maintained or improved. This includes:
- Policy development and planning e.g. reforming the water resources management legislation, state-wide waterways and foreshore area policies, the ecological water requirements1 and environmental water provisions policy and draft Western Australian floodplain management strategy.
- Management e.g. development of ecological water requirements and environmental water provisions, flood risk plans, developing waterways
management plans, authorising bed and bank disturbance (under the Rights in Water and Irrigation Act, 1914), recommending conditions for land use and development proposals through the statutory referral system, management of high-value systems that are outside the conservation estate.
- Assessment e.g. the state-wide method for prioritising waterways management; and investigation and monitoring of waterway health, quality and quantity, evaluation of trends, estuary remediation and algal bloom management techniques and responding to fish deaths.
Repairing waterways
The Department of Water supports river restoration, builds community capacity to undertake river restoration and contributes to river action plans through funding programs such as the State NRM Transition Year 2008/09 program and the Commonwealth government’s Caring for Our Country Program. River restoration includes engineering works for erosion management, riffle and fishway construction, fencing and riparian vegetation restoration.
State Waterways Initiative
The State waterways initiative provides a strategic framework to plan and manage our aterways; and sets waterways management priorities to 2011. These include:
- Prepare waterways management plans and support river action plans to maintain and improve the values of priority waterways
- Support and undertake research into waterways condition, values and threats to assist with establishing priorities for waterways management activities
- Develop and implement approaches to protecting wild rivers and other high environmental value waterways
- Seek opportunities to improve monitoring of the health of waterways to establish long term trends; assist with planning, implementing and evaluating management activities to improve waterways health
- Review waterways legislation and implement changes that will improve the efficiency and effectiveness of waterways management and clarify responsibilities for waterways management
- Develop a prioritisation system to identify those rivers that are most in need of management.
- Continue to seek funding for incentives that encourage and aid landowners and other land managers to protect and manage waterways on their properties; and raise community capacity to manage and protect waterways in priority areas.
Further information
To contact us for information on the department's waterways program: e-mail: waterways@water.wa.gov.au or contact your nearest Department of Water regional office.
To recognise the significant waterways management role of Dr Luke Pen, the Department of Water has initiated the annual Luke Pen award for outstanding undergraduate students.