News

The health and wellbeing of our community is of utmost importance and Georges Riverkeeper is closely monitoring the advice and adhering to the directives of public health agencies to help stem the spread of Coronavirus (COVID-19) in our community.

To address any concerns you may have regarding Coronavirus and recreational use of the Georges River, please refer to the latest information and advice provided by NSW Health:

As the construction industry picks up the pace following the recent COVID-19 lockdown and rainfall surge, results from the November Get the Site Right inspection blitz show that more effort is needed by builders and developers to improve erosion and sediment controls on their sites.

Seventeen councils across Sydney and the Hunter Coast took part in the week-long education and compliance campaign with officers inspecting almost 500 residential and commercial sites.

After some delays, due to Covid-19 and the wet weather, water quality monitoring for spring/summer 2021 is underway.

The monitoring started in the upper catchment of the Georges River. We have been sampling in the Fairfield and Canterbury-Bankstown Local Governement Areas.

At Cabramatta Creek locals warned us about "Fred", the red bellied black snake that lives on the bank but it was the eel slithering past Marion that made her yelp! 

We are pleased to announce that Georges Riverkeeper's partnership with Corrective Services NSW has restarted after COVID-19 restrictions have been eased across the catchment. Buses are hitting the road again in December!

Rob Dixon, Georges Riverkeeper Project Coordinator and Environmental Officer, has been busy making sure that everything is in place for recommencement including a new digital reporting system.

The works along Prospect Creek as part of a DPI Fish Habitat Action Grant are now in full swing. City of Canterbury Bankstown contractors have been treating Balloon Vine and other climbing weeds along the 3 km riparian corridor in Georges Hall and Lansdowne. Despite rainy conditions, contractors have managed to skirt the climbing vines out of important riparian canopy trees and are about to treat what remains in the ground layer with a selective herbicide. This will ensure other, non-target species remain in-tact and help prevent erosion.

Time flies when you're having fun and working hard! We are in the final year of implementation of the four-year Georges Riverkeeper Strategic Plan 2018-2022. And, as such, we are in the process of reflecting and reviewing how we went implementing the plan, and examining our successes and failures.

In coming months, we will be consulting with our member council staff to seek feedback on our implementation of the strategy to date.

Four students from Macquarie University were recently given the tough task of reading through engineering papers and specifications of Gross Pollutant Traps (GPT). As stormwater carries pollutants to our waterways, GPTs are perceived to be vitally important. The students set out to ascertain how accurate claims are that GPTs remove pollutants. They found many of the manufacturers claims were unfounded and some were exaggerations, which defied the rules of chemistry and physics.

During 2021, as part of our Research Program, Georges Riverkeeper partnered with students at Macquarie University on projects with 'real world' implications. 

One of the student groups investigated Georges Riverkeeper’s extensive water quality dataset, something that has not been done since 2016. Due to time constraints, a few sites and parameters were selected.

Across the sites analysed, students found fluctuation in the values across most parameters, but not necessarily any notable increase or decrease over the period since 2009.

Over the past few months, Georges Riverkeeper has been working with Advanced Science students from Macquarie University for group projects with ‘real world’ implications. Three projects were undertaken, including a spatial analysis of macrophytes in the Georges River.