The Blue Mountains are one of only two cities on the planet surrounded by UNESCO World Heritage listed wilderness. With nearly all our development situated on ridgetops, that wilderness receives vast quantities of urban stormwater. This presents a challenge – how do we measure the impact that stormwater is having on ecological health, and how do we prioritise our limited resources to fix it?
For 28 years Blue Mountains City Council have collected water quality and macroinvertebrate stream health data across the LGA in a monitoring program that’s expanded to over 80 sites. We’ve recorded over 260 000 invertebrates from 131 families as droughts, floods, fires and urbanisation have shaped our waterways.
This data has enabled us to prioritise catchments for intervention, and revealed directly connected imperviousness as the greatest determinant of stream health. It has supported grants for catchment restoration and has been used by students and our community for research and advocacy.
We share our data publicly through a comprehensive online explorer, as well as annual snapshots and a schools program.
This presentation shares the story of our monitoring program to date, it’s challenges and wins, and the journey of making such complex data accessible and understandable to the public.