The State Government’s Improving our waterways: Victorian waterway management strategy is now out.
The important background to this document is that Catchment Management Authorities have had staff cutbacks of around 25%, and DEPI hasn’t done much better.
The Strategy is 285 pages long, and contains lots of interesting information, with action ideas to go with it. The question is whether any of the ideas will ever be properly implemented.
The relevant ministers boast in their foreword that they’ve allocated $100 million over four years to river health. This is $25 million a year—half what the Government allocates to the Grand Prix.
The poverty of resources shows in the Strategy: it seems in many cases to have simply abandoned even the pretence that the nice ideas it fields will ever be implemented.
Upper Loddon: this stretch of river is one of the few healthy ones in our region: in North Central and NW Victoria less than ten per cent of streams are in ‘good or excellent condition.’ The State Government is allocating half as much money to river health as it is to the Grand Prix.
A good example is on the matter of recreational activities. When the Draft Strategy was released for consultation in 2012 FOBIF made a submission which read in part as follows:
“On page 77 Policy 7.7 reads: ‘Where recreational activities occur that may impact on water condition, the relevant waterway manager or land manager will identify and manage these risks, where possible.’
“It’s hard to believe such a gormless policy can be seriously proposed in this important document. This amounts to saying, ‘If someone is damaging our waterways, we’ll try to do something if we can. If we can’t, we’ll just identify the problem and watch it get worse.’
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