THE six main urban waterways of Bathurst which feed into the Macquarie River have all been found to be in a degraded or poor state.
And while an action plan is set to be put in place, it is expected to take several years to fix the problems.
Much of the blame for the poor state of the waterways rests with the modern day farming practices of grazing and cropping.
Bathurst Regional Council is going through a 28-day public consultation period before it adopts its Urban Waterways Management Plan.
The plan was compiled by the Bathurst-based CenWest Environmental Services (CWES) after council was awarded a $75,000 grant in late 2008 from the Central West Catchment Management Authority to investigate the true state of the local tributaries.
As a result the health of Raglan, Hawthornden, Jordan, Sawpit, Saltram and Queen Charlotte’s Vale creeks was put under the microscope.
The bad news is that CWES found that no waterway, or any section of a waterway, was found to be in very good condition.
“The six waterways have been greatly altered since European settlement and overall the condition assessment reflects this change with much of the waterways being in a degraded or poor state,” the CWES report stated.
“The patterns of the waterways conditions shows that the agricultural practices of grazing and cropping, both in the historic and recent context, have had considerable impacts on waterways condition with many upper catchment streams on agricultural land in the former Bathurst City LGA being in a degraded state.
“One of the key threatening influences on waterways condition is not managing the agricultural land in accordance with its capability.”
According to Bathurst Regional Council’s environmental planning and building services director David Shaw, each creek was divided into a number of reaches and the condition of each of these was assessed in terms of water quality, bank and bed condition, riparian vegetation and hydrology.
“Each was assessed as being in highly degraded, degraded, poor, good or very good condition,” he said yesterday.
“Most of the reaches were assessed as being either in poor, degraded or highly degraded condition, with a few being assessed as good condition.
“These included the section of Jordan Creek that flows through Hector Park, Hawthornden Creek where it flows through Jacques Park and one section of Sawpit Creek.”
Mr Shaw said no reaches were identified as being in very good condition.
“The sections rated as being in good condition are mostly located in areas where council and the community have undertaken rehabilitation projects in recent times,” he said.
“Some of the main issues causing degradation of the waterways are gully, bank and bed erosion, loss of native riparian and instream vegetation, weed invasion and sedimentation from urban runoff.”
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