The Department of Water has developed the State Waterways Initiative as a strategic plan for waterways management to 2011.
The Initiative includes actions for improving waterways planning and management, identifying priorities for waterways management, supporting measures to protect environmentally significant waterways and supporting waterway restoration.
The actions will address two management priorities, including preventing and minimising degradation of waterways and repairing degraded waterways.
The Initiative also defines the waterways management role of the Department of Water under the two management priorities:
1. Prevent and minimise degradation of waterways by:
- policy development and planning (e.g. reforming the water resources management legislation, state-wide waterways and foreshore area policies, the ecological water requirements 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 and 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).
2. 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 the restoration of riparian vegetation (situated on the bank of a river or other body of water).