Keep your eye on the updates page for news from community monitors.
Getting started
“Community monitoring” is a new page where we will post the readings of various local monitors of water and soil conditions. We also hope we will be able to post news of recovery and survival. This is a community effort. We welcome input from all who are monitoring around the lakes and rivers.
The idea for monitoring began with photographs and emails. “Have you noticed the new growth through the acid sulfate soils?” “What is happening?” We spent weekends mapping the plants to document what was growing where. We collected seeds, planned nurseries.
The River, Lakes and Coorong Action Group launched their “The Summer We Saved the Lakes” campaign with a “do-it-ourselves” day at Clayton Bay on December 7, 2008. The Summer We Saved the Lakes
The Milang Old School House Community Centre (MOSHCC), the Goolwa to Wellington Local Action Planning Board Inc (GWLAP) and all the combined environment, community, Landcare, catchment and local action planning boards from Lake Albert to Goolwa in South Australia developed their Business Plan for the Lower Lakes Remediation and Green Jobs Package. The “SHORELINE: Partnerships in Bioremediation” Plan makes clear the commitment, skills and knowledge of our environment.
We looked to the CSIRO for reports on acid sulfate soils but they were slow coming. The report on the Finniss River and Currency was preliminary. We are still waiting for the final report. We found that decisions were being made based on research that had not been made available to the public. Every now and then a statistic would be released but without context, without access to the data, and with no explanation of the assumptions informing the models, we had little faith in the management strategies being proposed.
The rationale for the building of weirs/regulators – one between Clayton Bay and Hindmarsh Island and others at the mouth of the Finniss River and Currency Creek – shifted from creating a fresh water refuge to managing ASS. The SA Government had predicted that the “Finniss River and Currency Creek will acidify at a water level of approximately minus 0.75m AHD.” The pH levels reported by the publicly accessible monitoring stations (http://data.rivermurray.sa.gov.au/) are still alkaline (pH 8.57) and the levels are now minus 1.04m AHD. What is happening? Community monitors have been hard at work trying to make sense of the data.
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We also found that relevant reports were not even mentioned in proposals for managing ASS.
Project: Stage 1 - Preliminary Assessment of Treatment Options, prepared by Earth Sciences … Dec. 2008. Download the document here
Lower Murray Lakes Project: Stage 2 - Preliminary Assessment of Treatment Options, prepared by Earth Sciences … Dec 2008 Download the document here
Recent reports from the CSIRO on Acid Sulfate Soils
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Preliminary Assessment of Acid Sulfate Soil Materials in Currency Creek, Finniss River, Tookayerta Creek and Black Swamp region, South Australia. See report
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Acid sulfate soils in subaqueous, waterlogged and drained soil environments in Lake Albert, Lake Alexandrina and River Murray below Blanchetown (Lock 1): properties, distribution, genesis, risks and management. See report
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Acid sulfate soils in subaqueous, waterlogged and drained soil environments of nine wetlands below Blanchetown (Lock 1), South Australia: properties, genesis, risks and management. See report
We have been following the CSIRO guidelines re testing.
- We have been working with Carole Richardson who is the Project Officer responsible for the development and implementation of the “Community Involvement in Preliminary Ecological Investigations into Adaptation and Rehabilitation of the Coorong, Lake Alexandrina, Lake Albert, and Murray Mouth Region” Project. Her role is to ensure effective community partnerships at local and regional levels in the delivery of projects funded to implement community driven acid sulfate soils remediation and associated monitoring programs. It’s good to have Carole on the job. She is local. She knows the country and she has worked tirelessly with the local community as a volunteer.
- We have been working with the local LAP groups.
