Secondary : Rivers and Creeks
Rivers and Creeks
Rivers and Creeks - Clean Rivers Mean A Clean Environment
Our rivers and creeks are some of Melbourne's most precious natural environments. Melbourne Water looks after rivers and creeks throughout the Port Phillip and Westernport region and helps local councils to ensure that the waterways in their areas are clean.
- Learn about Melbourne's most famous river, The Yarra River.
- For more information on Melbourne's rivers, creeks and streams, visit Melbourne water's web site or download Melbourne's Rivers and Creeks 2004 Report (1.4 Mb PDF).
How clean are our rivers and creeks?
In 1997 Melbourne Water established a Healthy Waterways program for the Port Phillip and Westernport catchments, which aims to improve water quality and stream condition.
Index of River Condition
Melbourne Water's Index of River Condition (IRC) is designed to provide an overall integrated measure of the environmental condition of rivers. It is based on the Index of Stream Condition (ISC) developed by Department of Sustainability and Environment for rural rivers and creeks. The Department of Sustainability and Environment developed the ISC to provide an integrated measure of the environmental condition of the state of Victoria's rural rivers and creeks.
The ISC has been modified to account for the urban rivers and creeks in Melbourne Water's operating area and includes data for all of the rivers and creeks that Melbourne Water manages.
It amalgamates information on the naturalness of the flow regime, water quality, condition of the channel and riparian zone and the invertebrate communities living in the river.
The index contains five sub-indices and provides a summary of the extent of change from natural or ideal conditions for each of the sub-indices:
- physical form (stream bank and bed condition, presence of and access to physical habitat, artificial barriers)
- streamside zone (quality and quantity of streamside vegetation and condition of billabongs)
- hydrology (flow volume and seasonality of flow)
- water quality (key water quality indicators compared against Victorian Government environment protection policy water quality objectives)
- aquatic life (diversity of macroinvertebrates).
Each sub-index is scored out of a maximum of 10, so that the overall score for the index will vary between a minimum of 0 and a maximum of 50. River condition is then allocated to one of five classifications: very poor, poor, moderate, good or excellent.
The Index of River Condition assessments on Melbourne Water's rivers and creeks have shown that, overall, there are slightly more streams in excellent or good condition than in poor or very poor condition. This result can be attributed to a fairly large proportion of pristine rivers and creeks in closed water supply catchments. Approximately one third of rivers and creeks are in moderate condition. Many of the highly urbanised rivers and creeks such as the Moonee Ponds, Gardiners, Dandenong, Darebin and Merri Creeks exhibit poor to very poor environmental condition. Rural areas also have a large proportion of streams in poor and very poor condition.
Melbourne Water undertakes continuous monitoring of our rivers and creeks at 72 sites throughout the Melbourne and Metropolitan area. The data collected from these sites assists Melbourne Water in determining the priorities for rehabilitation of the rivers and creeks.
Useful Teacher Resources
A list of useful teacher resources can be found under Educational Resources.