Tamar Estuary
River Health Action Plan
ii
5.5
Peer review ...................................................................................................................................................................... 31
5.6
Hard Infrastructure Findings ........................................................................................................................................ 32
5.7
Regulatory and “Green” Infrastructure Findings .................................................................................................... 36
5.8
Recommendations .......................................................................................................................................................... 37
6. Expected outcomes of investments and actions proposed............................................................. 40
6.1
Impact of Catchment Action investment recommendations ............................................................................... 40
6.2
Impact of Combined System investment recommendations................................................................................ 40
6.3
Summary of investment plan and expected timing ................................................................................................. 44
7. Targets and monitoring ..................................................................................................................... 46
7.1
Reductions in concentrations in context .................................................................................................................. 46
7.2
Targets .............................................................................................................................................................................. 47
7.3
Monitoring ........................................................................................................................................................................ 47
8. Funding and Financing of priorities ................................................................................................... 49
8.1
TasWater LSIP ................................................................................................................................................................. 49
8.2
Launceston City Council ............................................................................................................................................... 49
8.3
Department of Environment and Energy .................................................................................................................. 49
8.4
Clean Energy Finance Corporation ............................................................................................................................ 50
9. Communication and education ......................................................................................................... 51
10.
Sedimentation ................................................................................................................................. 52
11.
Ongoing governance ....................................................................................................................... 53
Appendices ................................................................................................................................................. 54
Tamar Estuary
River Health Action Plan
1
Executive Summary
Background
and Process
The Tamar Estuary Management Taskforce (the Taskforce) was established under the Launceston City Deal with
an aim of identifying investments to improve the health of the Tamar Estuary. As part of this work, the Taskforce
was charged with delivering a River Health Action Plan (this Plan) by the end of 2017.
Influences including the City’s combined sewerage and stormwater system, the inability to flush sediment due to
marine tides meeting freshwater rivers, agricultural practices further up in the catchment, historical industrial
practices, outflows from multiple waste water treatment plants throughout the Estuary, river floods and man
made changes to the flow and channel of the Estuary have all been cited as reasons for the Tamar not meeting
modern expectations of health and amenity.
The Taskforce identified improving public health measures of water quality in the Launceston to Legana part of
the Estuary as its initial priority. Two Taskforce working groups were subsequently established - one considering
best value for money actions in the Estuary’s catchments to stop the flow of pathogens into the Tamar (the
Catchment Action Working Group) and a second looking at possible actions to mitigate untreated overflows
from the City’s combined sewerage and stormwater system (the Combined System Overflow Working Group).
The Taskforce conducted a public consultation process calling for submissions regarding the level of service
expected from the Estuary and asking for evidence based proposals for improving Estuary health. While the
Taskforce had decided its initial work would focus on public health measures in the upper catchment, it was
conscious that there may be other views as to what the priorities for the Estuary are and was anxious to capture
these.
Catchment Action Working Group
The Catchment Action Working Group utilised and extended upon the analysis already completed by the Tamar
Estuary and Esk Rivers (TEER) program, but with a narrower focus on the public health actions that had been
identified in TEER’s Water Quality Improvement Plan 2015 (WQIP).
Actions considered targeted pollutants coming from dairy, grazing and urban areas. These land uses are the three
largest contributors to pathogen loads in the greater Estuary catchment and are also major controllable sources
of nutrient and sediment loads.
These actions, captured in the green, blue and red boxes in the figure below, were assessed against the following
criteria to determine which would provide the best value for money.
High leverage – actions must have a large relative impact on pollutant loads.
Adoptable – feedback from key stakeholders must indicate that actions can be adopted at sufficient levels
with incentives.
Measurable – actions need to be able to be accounted for within a planning and investment cycle.