2019-07-09 Planning & Environment Committee Agenda

PLANNING & ENVIRONMENT COMMITTEE MEETING AGENDA                                         9 JULY 2019


social benefits survey of residents regarding the condition, useability and accessibility of waterways
is also included, with data used to inform the community benefits rating.
In 2018 the Noosa River received an A-minus Report Card rating for catchment health and 4.5
stars for community waterways benefits rating.
In addition, HLW provide access to annual trend analysis of the catchment health and maintains
integrated catchment and receiving water quality models (i.e. E-source & TuFlow) which provides
Council with the tools to enable forecasts of water quality under different catchment management
scenarios. This information will help guide investment in catchment management under the new
Noosa River Plan and achieve the water quality targets set out in the Environment Strategy.
2.    Water by Design
Healthy Waterways is a leader in the development of guidelines in relation to Water Sensitive
Urban Design (WSUD), Erosion and Sediment Control (ESC) and the Living Waterways design
initiative. Guidelines are used to support State Planning Policy and development of industry
standards. This information helps guide urban stormwater treatment solutions in new
developments and capital works.
Waterplay Program
Recreational waterways such as bathing reserves are monitored for health parameters including
Enterococci to inform appropriate management responses relating to flood waters and the pre-
swim season. This information helps guide management of recreational waters and public health.
Previous Council Consideration
Ordinary Meeting Minutes, 21 July 2016, Item 11, Page 3
That Council note the report by the Principal Environment Officer to the Planning & Environment
Committee Meeting dated 12 July 2016 and authorise the CEO to enter into a 3 (three) year Deed
of Agreement with Healthy Waterways.
Finance
Healthy Land and Water are proposing a 3 year funding agreement as follows:
    2019-2020 $24,330
    2020-2021 $24,800
    2021-2022 $25,250
A total financial commitment of $74,380 over three years. Council has budgeted for this in its 2019-
2020 budget.
Council may terminate the agreement if needed subject to section 2 of the agreement (term and
termination clauses), and may hold instalments if the Core Funding Deliverables have not been
met by HLW.
Risks & Opportunities
If Council does not enter into the agreement with HLW, our consistency with 18 years of ecosystem
health monitoring in the Noosa River catchment and annual Report Cards will be lost.
A further opportunity exists outside the 3-year Network Member Agreement funding commitment
to ‘fine tune’ the Noosa specific water quality predictive model. Previous year’s core funding
enabled HLW to build a coupled three-dimensional hydrodynamic and water quality model for the
Noosa estuary, which recently received a major upgrade to include improved sediment re-
suspension predictions for the lakes and better nutrient dynamics predictions. However, it still
requires an amount of field work to enable it to be fully calibrated for the unusual salinity dynamics
experienced in the Noosa estuary.
Field data is required to provide base data for full model calibration and validation. This would
involve deployment of two water quality instruments (fully submersible conductivity, temperature

                                                                                     Page 95 of 128