This technical Webinar was a 2-part series focused on various angles of the Healthy Waterways Strategy. The series explored perspectives from government (State and Local) and practitioners to get a peek into policy, guidelines and potential solutions for effective implementation.
The Healthy Waterways Strategy (HWS) was released in 2018 and provides direction towards a regional vision for the health of rivers, estuaries and wetlands in the Port Phillip and Westernport region. It is a strategy that is shared across Melbourne Water, state and local government, water corporations and the community. It builds on a long-term regional vision for waterway health by providing detailed, catchment-specific visions, goals, long-term targets (10-50 years) and 10-year performance objectives for each of the five major catchments within the Port Phillip and Westernport region (Werribee, Maribyrnong, Yarra, Dandenong and Westernport).
The first session on the 21st May provided an overview of the Healthy Waterways Strategy, what it’s about and science behind the strategy. The session also discussed how the strategy could be implemented with state legislation.
The second session on the 28th of May unpacked the technical challenges of the Healthy Waterways Strategy at the ground level by considering Local Government and practitioner viewpoint.
Strategy Overview Webinar: Thursday 21st May
Speakers
Leon Metzeling
EPA Victoria
Leon is Principal Expert Inland Waters at EPA Victoria and has been with EPA for over 30 years. He was part of the 2013/14 review of the stormwater BPEM, has dealt with many impacts from stormwater in his time at EPA and continues to be involved in research on stormwater impacts. He has been Victoria’s representative on the team managing the review of the National Water Quality Guidelines. He had a lead role in the science input to the new SEPP (Waters) which was gazetted in October 2018 and is involved in the development of the new legislative instruments which will replace the SEPP once the new EP Act comes into force in 2021. He has about 40 publications in the peer review literature focusing mainly on freshwater ecology and bioassessment but has recently focused on the impact of emerging contaminants on aquatic systems and human health.
Trish Grant
Melbourne Water
Trish currently works at Melbourne Water with a team of river health caretakers for the waterways of greater Melbourne. Trish’s role is to help guide the translation of the best available science into on-ground actions to protect river health so that the community goals of the Healthy Waterways Strategy are met. Her background is in water quality impacts from catchment land use, waterway health community education and agricultural science.
Sigourney Irvine
EPA Victoria
Sigourney is a Senior Policy Officer in the Water Team at EPA Victoria and is currently managing the project to develop new stormwater management guidelines. She is experienced in regulatory reform and has been involved in reviewing permissioning and noise legislation, and also the development of subordinate legislation under the new Environment Protection Act.
Sharyn Rossrakesh
Melbourne Water
Sharyn has a masters degree in fluvial geomorphology and spent several years at the Cooperative Centre for Catchment Hydrology in the late 1990s, collecting and analyzing waterway and stormwater data. At Melbourne Water Sharyn has had different roles relating to waterway management from condition monitoring, planning on-ground works and developing new strategies and policies. She was instrumental in setting up a Nitrogen Offsets program and an Environmental Significance Overlay (part of an innovative stormwater disconnection research project). Sharyn has been heavily involved in the recent Healthy Waterways Strategy refresh and the subsequent Monitoring, Evaluation and Reporting Plan.
Presentations
Strategy Challenges Webinar: Thursday 28th May
Speakers
Daniel Fokkens
City of Casey
Daniel is a Civil Engineer who has worked in the stormwater industry for 14 years across the strategic planning, design and construction fields.
Daniel has extensive experience in water management, working on local and interstate projects. Daniel has worked on a range of projects across the land development and infrastructure sectors for both the public and private sector and is known for his passion in integrated water management.
Daniel started his career working in the private sector for many years but is now enjoying his time in local government having started with the City of Casey in 2014. Daniel is now the Team Leader of the Subdivision and Development Engineering team where he enjoys working between developers and the water industry to implement best practice in water management into land development projects.
Georgie Wettenhall
Georgie has been passionate about sustainable stormwater management since she fell out of her kayak into the Yarra. She is interested in the use of modelling and economics to influence policy and practice. She currently works for the CRC for Water Sensitive Cities and DesignFlow consulting