Clean River Challenges Issued

Pollution warnings at West End have followed an already ‘poor’ D+ score on the latest river health report card.  What more do authorities need before they get serious about cleaning our river?!

We were appalled to see our Lower Brisbane River catchment rated a D+ (poor) on the Healthy Land & Water South East Queensland Report Card 2017, down from C- (fair).

Then, in mid-February, we learned a section of the Brisbane River at West End would be closed off to the public after contamination was found at the site of an old coal tar processing facility.

As long-time campaigners on Brisbane River issues, we want to really step up the conversation about our river, putting pressure on authorities to actually do something.

The Brisbane River is our most important recreational and tourism asset.  Yet no effort is really being made to clean it up.

Is there a single politician or bureaucrat who has the guts and the authority to deal with this?  No-one will stand up and take responsibility.

Council?  State Government, Department of Natural Resources, or Environment, or Boating and Fisheries ,or Maritime Safety … who?  It is a disgraceful mish-mash.

The main problem is there are several authorities covering the Brisbane River and everybody leaves it to everyone else.

Challenge No. 1: Resources for Revegetation 

Recently, we learned of a PhD student who’s convinced he has the solution to clearing our brown murky river.  Jesper Nielsen’s PhD thesis looked for a solution to the Brisbane River’s brown colour.

He believes a cure lies with bacopa monnieri, a native freshwater plant that flourished on the river’s muddy banks after the 2011 floods.  He and his team have been replanting the bacopa in Jindalee.

The young scientist believes these plants will keep the mud up on the banks rather than it washing into the river, allowing the river to clear itself.  “If I can get a team of people not afraid of the mud and hard work, we could get the river blue in four years, maybe less,” he ambitiously told the ABC.

Most eminent water experts agree erosion control is the answer.  However, Griffith University professor of water science and Australian Rivers Institute director Jon Olley says a much wider $500 million, 10-year revegetation plan is needed.

So here’s our challenge to authorities: get behind Jesper, Jon and everyone else advocating revegetation and erosion control.  Has anyone in authority even contacted Jesper?

If they think he’s wrong, tell us, and find alternative solutions.  This simple, cost-effective plan needs to be either discredited, or immediately implemented.  Once and for all, devote serious resources to rehabilitating and protecting our greatest asset.

Challenge No. 2: Host the World’s Richest River Swim

Brisbane City Council is advancing plans to further open up our river for tourism and recreation, to tour boats, water taxis and recreational craft.  They seem finally to be recognising the vital role the river must play in our city’s future.

But, there’s still little action to actually clean it up, which is quite obviously fundamental to any plan to refocus Brisbane as the ‘River City’.  There is no benchmark for achievement, no deadline to spur action.  What we need is a target, a finish line that must be crossed.

So, here’s our next challenge.

Authorities must resolve to ensure the Brisbane River is once again clear enough for swimming, and set a deadline to achieve it.  The target date needs to closely follow the completion of Queen’s Wharf, say 2025 at the latest.

Then herald this triumph by holding the ‘world’s richest open water swimming race’, with a prize purse worth global attention.  Set the course between the Victoria and Story bridges.

Imagine, the international spotlight on our city as the world’s best swimmers churn through the clear waters of the Brisbane River, past our dazzling new Queen’s Wharf and Howard Smith Wharves precincts.

This is not pie-in-the-sky dreaming.  It can be done.  Lee Kuan Yew cleaned up Singapore’s rivers in just 10 years, yet when he started, they were stinking open sewers by comparison.

Paris is on a similar mission.  Last July, mayor Anne Hidalgo opened a clean swimming zone in a city canal, allowing urban bathing for the first time since 1923.  She hailed it a step on the way to open water swim events in the Seine River for the 2024 Olympic Games.

Worldwide Attention

Brisbane is still mulling over whether to bid for the 2032 Olympics.  But, while we’re 100% behind an Olympic bid, we reckon 2032 is too distant a goal.  So let’s instigate our own event inside a decade, focus it on the river, and make it significant enough to garner worldwide attention.

The ‘world’s richest’ tag sound expensive, but it would actually be quite economical as sporting events go.  On the swimming scene, a first prize of anything upwards of $25,000 would put our race in front in the money stakes.

A long-term investment in an event like this would be far more valuable than any one-off prize fight … not to mention so much better when it comes to tourism promotion and branding for our beautiful sub-tropical city.

The world’s largest such event, the Taiwan’s Sun Moon Lake International Swimming Carnival, attracts up to 22,000 for a 3.3km lake swim.  River events take place in locations as diverse as China’s Xinjin River, the Bosphorus in Turkey, River Navia in Spain, Sweden’s Van, and the River Liffey in Dublin.

If we put in even half the effort of Singapore or Paris, we could get our river quality back. There are so many immediate steps that could be taken.  Catch the thousands of bottles, straws, cans and burger wrappers that pour out of the creeks into the river and ultimately into Moreton Bay for a start!

While we do nothing, nothing can be achieved.  So come on authorities… rise to these challenges!

Churchie students completing the ‘Pocket Swim ‘ in 1937

Blog
Related Posts
Clean River Challenges Issued