Blue Mountains News

Our Blue Mountains waterways are some of the most beautiful, iconic and highly valued in Australia and Council regularly monitors them as part of our continued care.

The latest snapshot reveals that 64 per cent of our waterways are in good to excellent health and 36 per cent are in poor to fair health.

Although a useful snapshot of water quality, it is important to note that ratings can change depending on season, climate, pollution events and other factors.

“The quality of our water is intrinsic to the overall health of our environment and in ensuring continued biodiversity,” Mayor Cr Mark Greenhill said. “That’s why it’s crucial that we regularly monitor our water and keep striving to improve water health.

“Council’s long term water monitoring program provides us with a wealth of scientific data, enabling us to better care for our beautiful waterways. It’s not something we’re required to do, but we know it’s a critical service for our community and as stewards of the precious World Heritage Area we live in.

“These results show that there is while there is still work to be done to protect Blue Mountains waterways from the impacts of urban stormwater, the general health of many local waterways remains good.

“As well as helping us track our progress, our annual Waterways Health Snapshot offers ways all our residents can take small but significant steps that can really make a difference to water health.”

This edition of the Snapshot has a focus on turtles, highlighting the importance of our waterways and how they rely on each other for health.

Turtles are ‘amniotes’ – they breathe air and lay their eggs on land. But water is also essential for their health, and turtles are also essential for our waterways. Turtles help keep our waterways clean by hoovering up dead things in the water, which is essential to maintaining water quality, and supporting other species.

Turtles face an uncertain future from animals that eat them and their eggs. In fact, 95 per cent of baby turtles don’t survive because their nests are destroyed before hatching.

Common predators and threats include foxes, domestic cats and dogs, littler, fishing, yabby traps and even cars.

Some easy ways we can all help turtles:

• Keep your cats safe indoors – day or night.
• Help turtles cross the road safely.
• Share turtle sightings (especially nesting turtles) on theTurtle Sat app.
• Protect turtle nests.
• Help protect our waterways – keep chemicals, detergents, paints, pesticides, litter and soil/sand out of street drains.
• Keep turtles safe from drowning and injury – avoid yabby traps and don’t leave your fishing line or hooks behind.

This year marks the 25^th anniversary of our water monitoring program. Council will be celebrating that milestone later this year by launching a new interactive Waterway Health Explorer.

The explorer will include 25 years of data from our three water monitoring programs: ecological waterway health, recreational water quality, and freshwater crayfish surveys. It will also show how our water quality data can be applied to inform waterway management.

Download a copy of the 2024 Waterways Health Snapshot and get a sneak peek of the new Waterway Health Explorer: here