How to get the most out of this website

• Introduction
• Guiding principles - for water quality and river flow management
• 1. Background
• 2. Consultation - community comment on the proposed objectives
• 3. Objectives - water quality and river flow objectives for the catchment
• 4. WQOs - water quality objectives explained
• 5. RFOs - river flow objectives explained
• Bibliography
• Glossary
• Map
• At a Glance - catchment at a glance

Introduction

The environmental objectives are presented as a set of guidelines for each of 31 NSW catchments. Each set of guidelines follows the same format.

Some parts of the guidelines are identical for all catchments, so if you are interested in two or more catchments you don't have to read or save every part twice.

The content of other parts of the guidelines differs considerably between catchments. There are also sections that appear similar but contain important differences between catchments. To read or save all of the guidelines applying to a catchment you should download all those sections for that catchment.

Guiding principles - for water quality and river flow management

• content identical for all catchments.

1. Background

• tells you why the NSW Government has developed water quality and river flow objectives, how it developed them, and what will be done to achieve them
• content differs between catchments
• four versions, depending on the catchment – for the Sydney Harbour and Parramatta River catchment, for coastal catchments for which Healthy Rivers Commission (HRC) Inquiries have been announced, for all other coastal catchments, and for all inland catchments. Reports of previous Inquiries are available from the Department of Infrastructure Planning and Natural Resources or Natural Resouces Commission websites

2. Consultation - community comment on the proposed objectives

• reports back on the community's comments on the proposed objectives for the specific catchment and lists the major river health issues raised
• content differs for each catchment.

3. Objectives - water quality and river flow objectives for the catchment

• the core part of each catchment report
• content differs for each catchment
• lists the water quality and river flow objectives that apply to the specific catchment
• links each catchment-specific objective to an explanation of the objective (which appears in an additional small browser window)

4. WQOs - water quality objectives explained

• explains the water quality objectives (environmental values) for the catchment
• content differs between catchments
• In general ,for each water quality objective (environmental value), the website now provides examples of default trigger values or other criteria from the Australian Guidelines for Fresh and Marine Water Quality (ANZECC/ARMCANZ 2000). These indicators and default trigger values are identical across Southeast Australia (and therefore NSW), but differ between alpine, upland and lowland portions of catchment freshwater waterways. Indicators and trigger values also vary for estuarine, marine and wetland areas.
• Note that the ANZECC/ARMCANZ (2000) Guidelines recommend a risk-based approach, where default indicators and criteria (trigger values) are used to assess whether there is a serious risk of environmental values not being supported. Where these are exceeded, the Guidelines recommend further local investigation and provide protocols to support development of locally specific technical criteria.
• In this framework, the NSW Water Quality Objectives provide the environmental values for each waterway and the technical decision framework provided by the Guidelines should be used to assess whether the values are being achieved.
• the Aquatic Foods objective varies between coastal and inland catchments.

5. RFOs explained - river flow objectives explained

• explains the river flow objectives for the catchment
• content differs between catchments
• coastal catchments have an additional objective (concerning estuaries) and different content as appropriate to the specific catchment.

Bibliography

• a list of documents referred to in the catchment guidelines, for further reading
• content differs between catchments.

Glossary

• some definitions you may find useful
• content is identical in all catchments except the Sydney Harbour and Parramatta River glossary, which is shorter.

Map

• a detailed map and legend for each catchment shows the areas of the catchment or categories of streams within the catchment
• This can be used with the "catchment at a glance" table to determine which water qualtiy objectives apply in different parts of the catchment.

At a Glance - catchment at a glance

• a one-page table (.gif image approx 30KB, and 800 x 500 pixels) showing the objectives applying to areas of this catchment or to categories of streams within the catchment. Each table image is linked to a PDF version for printing. (PDF requires a free, downloadable computer program called Acrobat Reader.)
• content differs for each catchment.

This page was published 1 May 2006