What's next to improve river and catchment health
The next steps to help restore and protect the rivers and aquifers of the Sydney region, and their catchments, are to:
- continue the interim environmental flow releases from Warragamba, Cataract, Cordeaux, Nepean, Woronora and Tallowa Dams
- continue to configure Cataract, Cordeaux and Nepean Dams and downstream weirs to allow new environmental flow releases to be made and to pass down the river and to allow fish to move upstream past the weirs
- monitor the impacts of the new environmental flow releases from Avon Dam
- start the new environmental flow releases from Cataract, Cordeaux and Nepean Dams, and downstream weirs, by 2010
- complete the modifications to Tallowa Dam to allow fish passage and to improve the quality, volume and pattern of water releases
- start the new environmental flow releases from Tallowa Dam once all water restrictions in Sydney are lifted and the infrastructure is completed
- continue support for on-ground catchment actions and the broad-scale Hawkesbury-Nepean River monitoring program
- finalise the draft water sharing plans for surface water and groundwater, incorporating the outcomes of community consultation
- finalise and implement the plan for managing nutrient inputs to the lower Hawkesbury-Nepean
- continue developing the final environmental flow regimes for Warragamba Dam.