$5 million for our rivers and catchment areas

By Samantha Elley

Thanks to a grant from the NSW Government the rivers in the Northern Rivers will be getting a ‘make over’.

Called the Northern Rivers Watershed Initiative, it involves initiating shovel-ready projects to improve water quality in the Tweed, Brunswick, Richmond and Evans river catchments.

“I am delighted to be announcing the funding of $5 million for the Northern Rivers Watershed Initiative,” said Lismore state member, Janelle Saffin.

“It’s a whole series of projects, it operates across six local government areas from Lismore, Kyogle, Richmond Valley, Ballina, Tweed, Byron.

“We’ve talked about doing repair and we’ve talked about the Watershed Initiative for a long time and Rous County Council did a lot of work on it.”

The funding became an election commitment which has now come to fruition, according to Ms Saffin.

Works will start in  October, 2024 and is based on the application of a range of natural flood management techniques across the Northern Rivers.

Key projects include:

• Working with macadamia farmers on orchard floor management, water sensitive drainage and soil stabilisation.
• Improvements in waterway condition to establish self-sustaining vegetated buffer zones including weed removal, cattle exclusion and planting 10,000 trees.

Jeremy Stewart, Whian Whian Landcare, Garry Lambert, landholder with wife Margaret, State MP Janelle Saffin, Anthony Acret, Rous County Council and Joseph Leven, Casino Food Co-operative.

This is a major partnership between Rous County Council, Lismore City Council, Richmond Valley Council, Kyogle, Tweed, Byron and Ballina Shire Councils, North coast Local Land Services and the Northern Co-operative Meat Company.

“We are backed by a whole catchment community that is really motivated,” said Anthony Acret, Catchment Assets Manager at Rous County Council.

“We’ve got landcare groups, first nations groups, community organisations that are doing a lot of this work themselves and its great to be able to work with them in partnerships to generate these sorts of outcomes.

“And of course we can’t do this work without partnerships with landholders.”

Garry Lambert is one of those landholders who owns acreage at Boatharbour.

“My interest of course is the land around us but I am a member of the community,” said Mr Lamber, former mayor of Darwin.

“You don’t have to be a scientist to look down at that creek and see the degradation that has happened over many years. That’s the history of farming.

“There’s now a movement to bring some vitality back to these waterways and make them much more productive.”

Mr Lamber said he and his wife were working at regenerative farming practices.

“This is just a perfect way of making sure we can be sustainable, that maximise capacity of the land,” he said.

“But still keeping production happening, because we still need to feed people, still need employment for people but we need to manage the environment.”

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