South Maroochy RiverCare

ECOllaboration and Seqwater have partnered with eligible landholders over the past six years to deliver environmental projects on private properties to improve water quality and riparian ecosystems within the South Maroochy River catchment.

Through Seqwater funding, ECOllaboration can provide technical advice, project management and organisation of contractors to undertake activities on your property that improve the health of your land, stock and our waterways. The South Maroochy Rivercare program improves source water quality by delivering on-ground works that focus on three areas: sustainable agricultural practices, revegetation and weed control.

A core outcome of the South Maroochy Rivercare program is increasing landholder awareness and opportunity to education about best practice management of their property.

Our Rivercare program provides farm plans that involve high landholder engagement, which is supported through technical advice from ECOllaboration project officers.

We also support education through hosting educational workshops, and encourage creating connections with other landholders  to share their best practice tips and foster greater community within their local catchment.

The South Maroochy catchment extends for 89.4km2, and is a sub-catchment of the Maroochy catchment which houses the headwaters of the South Maroochy River, as well as Rocky Creek, Rock of Ages Creek and Echidna Creek. These waterways feed into Cooloolabin Dam, Wappa Dam – whose water is treated at the Image Flat Water Treatment Plant (WTP) – and Poona dam, which provides short term storage before being treated and distributed as drinking water throughout the region. 

Seqwater is responsible for providing safe and secure drinking water supply across South East Queensland through management of catchments, dams, and climate resilient water sources. Key threats to water quality include increased pathogens from livestock, risk of landslip and erosion, increased sediment runoff during wet weather events, and poor riparian health due to increased invasive species.  

By managing threats posed to water quality, the cost of water treatment for safe drinking water supply is greatly reduced, creating cost-savings per household for water supply. Furthermore, the health of our catchment is greatly increased, alongside the health and value of your property and livestock. 

Curramore Road at Witta is a demonstration site undertaking a range of different weed management treatments. We’re using innovative techniques such Herbicide encapsulation, Remote Mulching, Unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV/Drone) herbicide application and Hydromulching alongside our regular revegetation techniques. The overall end goal of this project is to restore the majority of the area to the surrounding mapped Regional Ecosystems.

This is another offset we are delivering for the Sunshine Coast Council that involves constructing koala habitat by planting 3,700 trees over a 4ha site along with 5 years maintenance. Although a smaller scale to the Mooloolah Acid Frog Ponds, as part of an offset rehabilitation plan the scope of works is similar. In addition to planting, we are also required to install Photo Monitoring Points, submit detailed reports, meet strategic KPI’s and follow the guidelines of the Queensland Environmental Offsets Policy. We have completed the site preparation and anticipate we will complete most of the planting before this year’s wet season begins.

Catchment Services manages a major 5 Yr N.A. Contract for the Sunshine Coast Council. It incorporates over 180 Natural Bushland Reserves and 11 Retention Ponds and storm water biobasins that are funded partly by the Environmental levee received by Sunshine Coast ratepayers. The combined total area is over 1600 Ha; linking biodiversity corridors that enable fauna to move freely and flora seed to be spread naturally by wind, water and native fauna. Our role is one of managing and reducing weed populations that will improve the overall biodiversity and health of each of these reserves. Occasionally we speed up that process by doing minor revegetation in gap areas that were originally weed infested. We also carry out Bushland Operational Assessments on some of the major reserves to assess the resilience indicators of the forested areas; to see how they have improved due to our management.

Inclusive also within this contract is the weed and site preparation of 20 Community sites that are worked by Community Groups in revegetation projects. Daily reports of all these reserves are sent to the Council for their staff to monitor the health of each of these reserves.