The vision and purpose we have been working towards has come to fruition with a number of exciting initiatives.

We can now see the real value of the range of tools being produced by the WISER Project – a Policy Risk Assessment Manual, a conceptual water balance model, a land use model, a water scenario model and an economic modelling tool.

The capacity to use these tools to analyse difficult problems and test solutions is exciting.

The proposal for a bid under the Australian Government’s ‘Water for the Future’ funding round for Water Harvesting and Reuse Projects provides an ideal opportunity to apply the science we have developed on a project of national significance.

At the same time, the proposal for a National Peri-Urban Water Research Centre is taking shape. Finally, we are preparing for our next Community Forum in early November. This promises to be another stimulating exercise in community engagement. If the Centre gets off the ground this forum will become a permanent fixture on the calendar.

Kevin Rozzoli

WISER Project researcher Dr Ranvir Singh has just finished an important hydrologic tool, Peri-Urban SIMple HYDrology (Peri-Urban SIMHYD), to simulate the hydrology and water balance components of South Creek Catchment.

The model takes into account the various components of water balance at catchment level, viz., rainfall runoff (including stormwater from urban areas), potable water use for domestic, industrial and primary production purposes, surface and groundwater extractions and effluent discharge. The testing of the model confirmed that the simulated values of various water balance components were quite similar to those observed in the South Creek.

With significant interest from various stakeholders, the WISER Project group recently organised a workshop to apply the Peri-Urban SIMHYD model for water management in Local Government Areas and peri-urban catchments. The workshop was conducted at the UWS Hawkesbury Campus on 12 August 2009, and attracted over 20 participants from local councils and state agencies. The participants included water engineers, managers and planners from Blacktown, Penrith, Liverpool and Hawkesbury Councils, Sydney Catchment Authority, Sydney Water Corporation, Department of Water and Energy, NSW Department of Primary Industries, Office of Hawkesbury-Nepean and WSROC.

Mr Bruce Simmons presented on the issues and opportunities in the management of peri-urban water cycles, and Ranvir introduced the Peri-Urban SIMHYD model and its potential applications for water management in peri-urban catchments with a focus on South Creek Catchment in Western Sydney. The workshop gave the participants a practical hands-on-experience to setup and run Peri-Urban SIMHYD for local hydrologic analysis including estimation of potential stormwater harvesting from development areas. The participants achieved outcomes from the exercises showing that they understood the simple and approximate methods, and expressed their view that the Peri-Urban SIMHYD provides a fairly simple tool to simulate the complete surface water balance of peri-urban catchments.

The model has the potential to simulate the hydrological impacts on streamflows and catchment water balance due to:
i) increased imperious area and potable water supply due to urbanisation
ii) projected climate change
iii) changes in surface water extraction and wastewater discharges in streams/waterways of a catchment.

Ranvir Singh & Harsharn Grewal

Industry and Investment NSW, in partnership with CSIRO and the CRC IF, is implementing a satellite and SMS irrigation scheduling service through the Water Smart Farms Project in the Hawkesbury-Nepean Catchment.

The right amount of water delivered to a crop at the right time is critical, not only to save water and improve yield but also for the best use of chemicals and fertilisers to enhance crop quality. The SMS service to an irrigator’s mobile phone aims to help irrigators determine how much water their crop has used and how long they need to run their pump or irrigation system each day. The scheme is funded by the Federal Government through the Water for the Future Program.

How does it work? Satellite images are used to determine crop coefficients for individual situations. The images are collected across Australia every 14-20 days, or more frequently, depending on the needs of growers. From these images plant canopy size can be determined which can then be used to derive a specific coefficient (Kc) for the crop. This information is then combined with data from on-ground weather stations to determine crop water use (ETo). The Water Smart Project will utilise four strategically located weather stations, such as the one in Figure 1, for this purpose.

Daily customised irrigation scheduling information is then sent to the irrigator’s mobile phone in the form of an SMS message. The service sends actual pump or irrigation run time based on the farmer’s individual irrigation system performance. So, on a daily basis an irrigator receives a simple SMS text message that gives suggested run times allowing them to more readily make irrigation decisions. This process is illustrated in Figure 2.

The service also allows irrigators to benchmark their water use, in real time, against other irrigators on the service. Using a web page, irrigators can see how much water they have applied and compare their water use against other irrigators at any time through the season.

Ho Dang and Bill Yiasoumi
Industry and Investment NSW


Figure 1: Automatic Weather stations will be used to assist the satellite technology to determine irrigation requirements


Figure 2: The processes and flow of information in the Satellite and SMS Irrigation Scheduling Service

Paul Martin and Jacky Williams from UNE are developing a Policy Risk assessment process.

It was successfully applied to various scenarios at a WISER workshop at UWS in August.

As a participative process, it involved a number of WISER researchers from UNE, UWS and Melbourne University, while also working with local and state government and community collaborators in the WISER Project.

The expected outcome of the Policy Risk assessment process will be both a greater awareness of the risks that might impact upon these strategic proposals, and also improvement in the methodology. This will hopefully ensure that the strategies and policy proposals which arise from the WISER research are robust and feasible, and likely to provide optimal benefits.

Paul Martin, UNE

Liverpool City Council’s Environment Restoration Plan is a partnership between the Council and its community – local environment groups, volunteers, business and industry –to rehabilitate our local riparian vegetation and bushland while also undertaking environmental programs.

The Plan was considered and adopted by Council and approved as a permanent levy by the Minister for Local Government in July 2007.

It is an integrated program of restoration activities and on-ground works designed to improve the health of our natural environment, in particular the riparian vegetation and waterways. The objectives of the Environment Restoration Plan include:

• The improvement of our natural areas via the delivery of riparian restoration programs on an ongoing basis
• Addressing key environmental issues across the Liverpool Local Government Area, through processes such as the Environment Advisory Committee, environmental reporting, community input and future planning tools
• Community education on significant environment impacts and environmental initiatives occurring within our city.

The Environment Restoration Plan has delivered a number of successful environmental programs, including environmental restoration projects, environmental education and support for community environmental activities. It has also successfully engaged the local community in sustaining Liverpool’s natural environment. Council supports nine environment groups under the Environment Restoration Plan. These groups conduct a range of activities in various sites across Liverpool, including tree planting, mulching, watering, weeding, litter collection and water testing. The Environment Restoration Plan program provides environment groups with tools, training, site preparation (ripping
and mulching), local native plants and qualified staff to assist in their activities.

Avind Lal
Liverpool City Council

Liverpool City Council has engaged the local community to participate in many environmental activities. Some of these are listed below.

• A monthly tree planting events calendar. Tree planting activities are held from March
to October each year (to avoid hot, weather and comply with water restrictions). The calendar is printed on a seeded door hanger - when the calendar year is finished the residents can plant them to grow some local native trees.

• A quarterly newsletter ‘Sustaining Liverpool’ includes articles about Council’s environmental projects, facts on weeds and native plants, diary dates for the community and competitions. This newsletter is sent to over 1,000 community members.

• Monthly free sustainability workshops that provide information to the community
on a range of environmental topics, including: creating a native garden, composting
and worm farming, bird watching, green cleaning, no-dig gardening, learning about local frogs and water and energy saving around the home. Council provides giveaways or prizes at all workshops.

• An Environment Advisory Committee and Environment Group Sub-Committee. These groups facilitate community representation and input for the Environment Restoration Plan program.

Avind Lal
Liverpool City Council

Following the success of last year’s community forum, this year’s community forum will be held on Saturday, 7 November 2009 from 10am to 12.30pm at Penrith City Council to coincide with Penrith Market Day.

The format of the Forum will be similar to the Insight program on SBS with the title ‘Who will Care for our Water in Western Sydney: The Future of River Health, Food Security and Community Health’.

Guests will include key community leaders/campaigners and representatives at the State and Federal level. Anyone from the Greater Western Sydney community, including special interest groups and NGOs, is welcome to attend.

Put this date in your diary and be part of this insightful and exciting event. For further information contact: Ms Regan Jenkins on 02 4570 1710 or email r.jenkins@uws.edu.au

What do you do? I work as the Waterways Rehabilitation Officer at Blacktown City Council. My job involves co-ordinating a range of Council activities and processes
that affect stormwater quality and quantity.

What are you passionate about? Stormwater management, water quality and the environment.

Why are you involved in the WISER Project? A great deal of my job revolves around integrated water cycle management initiatives. Council is also focusing on stormwater harvesting and reuse to provide an alternative water source for non-potable uses.

How do you plan to contribute to the WISER Project? By helping to link the research into regional and local strategies and by using the models developed to assess appropriate management options for implementation on a local scale.

What do you hope to get out of this? I hope to gain a better understanding of how the policy decisions and actions that Council may take could impact on the South Creek Catchment. This will enable Council to implement local water management policy and actions that have a clear link and contribute to regional strategies. It will also help Council identify long term strategies to ensure water security. I also hope to develop stronger ties and create long term partnerships by networking with the organisations involved.

Penrith City Council has undertaken erosion control and revegetation works to rehabilitate the lower section of a tributary of South Creek, located at the eastern end of Samuel Marsden Road in Orchard Hills. Upstream impacts including significant vegetation clearing, and land uses such as farming and residential development, has caused altered stream channel morphology on the site.

This increased peak flows through the site, causing a severe headcut and associated bed and bank erosion. Further rainfall resulted in significant sediment loads entering South Creek. Additionally, a number of environmental weeds had grown in the riparian zone and creek bed.

Council engaged consultants to undertake the design and construction of the stream channel rehabilitation. These complex engineering works were completed in June 2009, resulting in a stabilised bank and channel. Environmental weeds were also removed from the site and the area rehabilitated through revegetation works. As the vegetation takes hold it will provide further erosion control and improve the habitat values of the site.

The outcomes of the project include reduced sediment loads entering South Creek, improved water quality, enhancement of the site’s biodiversity values and improved public amenity.

Daria Rech, Penrith City Council

Photo: Samuel Marsden tributary after restoration

The focus of ‘the Production, Markets and the Environment’ research in the WISER Project is to provide processes to assess the economic, social and environmental outcomes that are primarily affected by a more harmonised irrigation practice required to maximise water use.

To date the following have been completed: (i) the stakeholder analysis for the model, (ii) modelling to isolate and value regional products and services and their water uses, and (iii) stakeholder analysis to assess different scenarios. Item (iii) has been completed for Council but work is ongoing on productive agriculture and proposed Western Sydney water cycle management proposals. Likewise, further development of environmental values in relation to the productive model is in progress.

In Western Sydney, the ongoing stakeholder interactions continue to help evaluate modelling scenarios. The scenarios will be assessed in December 2009 and preliminary attempts are being made to add a political component to the model. These attempts are promising and would create links between the Products, Markets and Environment research with Social, Cultural and Institutional research areas.

Maria Varua, UWS & Brian Davidson, University of Melbourne