DEVELOPMENT OF RIVER RIHABILITATION IN AUSTRALIA: LESSONS FOR SOUTH AFRICA Report to the Water Research Commission by Mandy C Uys Laughing Waters Aquatic Research, Consulting and Media WRC Report No: KV 144/03 ISBN No: 1-77005-088-4 October 2003 Disclaimer This report emanates from a project financed by the Water Research Commission (WRC) and is approved for publication. Approval does not signify that the contents necessarily reflect the views and policies of the WRC or th members of the project steering committee, nor does mention of trade names or commercial products constitute endorsement or recommendation for use. EXECUTIVE SUMMARY PART 1. INTRODUCTION 1. Introduction, Background and Aims This report is the outcome of a four month Senior Research Fellowship at the Centre for Cooperative Research for Catchment Hydrology (CRCCH) at the University of Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, during 2000. The research was led by Dr Ian Rutherfurd, then Programme Leader of the CRCCH Programme for River Restoration. Dr Rutherfurd and his colleagues had been, and are, instrumental in the development of the science and practice of river rehabilitation in Australia, and also developed the Australian Stream Rehabilitation Manuals (Volumes 1 and 2, 2000). The purpose of the research was to learn as much as possible about the field of river rehabilitation in Australia and elsewhere, and to assess where the links lay between current South African water resource management and the international field of river rehabilitation. This discipline is in its infancy in this country. It should be noted that this report was written in 2000/1 and that since that time institutional changes may have taken place in both Australia and South Africa, and methodologies may have been modified or further developed. The report should be read in that context. The aim of this WRC report is to convey, at a reasonably non-technical level, what South Africa can learn from the decade of development of river rehabilitation in Australia, and from their recently-published national-level guidelines and methodologies. This report is addressed to South African and Australian readers from diverse backgrounds, and has thus been aimed at a non-technical level. In addition, geographic, environmental and socio- political ‘context’ has been included for Australia, as this provides the background to what drove the initiation and development of river rehabilitation. Where this is not of interest to the more scientific reader, it is advised that these individuals skip to chapters of a more technical nature. The introductory and concluding chapters are of relevance to all. The introductory chapter provides a background to the field of rehabilitation, and a discussion of the many related terms in use to describe this discipline. While both the terms ‘restoration’ and ‘rehabilitation’ are commonly used, the more academic interpretation is that the term ‘restoration’ implies a return to natural pre-impact state and is thus aspirational and seldom achievable, while rehabilitation focusses on achievable objectives and also aims for improvement and protection, with the aim of the system eventually resembling its pre-impact state. The aim of ‘remediation’ is to improve the ecological condition of the river, while not aiming for an endpoint that resembles its original condition (Breen and Walsh in Rutherfurd and Fryirs, 1999). On the basis that, at least in contemporary literature, equal meaning is generally attached to the use of the terms ‘restoration’ and ‘rehabilitation’, these are used interchangeably in this report. The issue of system ‘recovery’ is fundamental to rehabilitation. Recovery relates to the ways in which systems respond to disturbances, both in a geomorphic and biological sense. One of the difficulties in rehabilitation planning lies in assessing whether a system is in a state of recovery, and if so, where along therecovery trajectory it lies. This assessment requires the expertise of several specialists: at the least an experienced fluvial geomorphologist, a hydrologist, and ecologists. It includes what may be a lengthy process iii of acquiring information on pre-impact state, past disturbance events (natural and non-), flow records, catchment land-use, and causes of degradation. Where a stream is considered to be recovering, the rehabilitation planning decision can either be to assist with and accelerate the process, or to allow natural recovery to proceed unhindered. In many parts of the world, river restoration has developed and advanced to the point where national and /or regional guidelines have been developed, largely based on principles and processes learnt from internal or external restoration exercises. In South Africa, there is as yet no structured programme for research and development in the field of river restoration. South Africa is well placed to absorb the lessons of international experience and to become world class in the field of urban and non-urban river restoration without having to reinvent the wheel. Failure to recognise the timeliness of linking to, or learning from, external initiatives in river rehabilitation and protection is likely to prove extremely expensive both in economic and in environmental terms. It is less a matter of ‘what are the costs of doing it’, and more a matter of ‘what are the costs of not doing it?’ PART 2. AUSTRALIA 2. Background, water resource management and policy reform The second chapter provides a background to the geography and political history of Australia, and discusses the forces that have shaped the changes in water management since settlement and particularly over the past decade or more, and led to the growth of the field of river rehabilitation. The major impacts to Australia’s rivers post-settlement include cleared riparian zones and river banks; gullying and erosion; channel incision; water quality deterioration; flow reductions and alterations; channel straightening; and removal of large woody debris. Three three phases of river management are described by Finlayson and Brizga (2000): the Inception Phase following settlement, when clearing of land for agriculture led to extensive degradation of rivers; the Engineering Phase during which governments took the lead role in water management and water schemes flourished; and the Environmental Phase, during which resource issues gathered status, water services were privatised, and water markets were established. Major political changes, water industry reforms and environmental flow issues occurred during the early to mid-1990s, creating a framework within which the degradation of Australian waterways could be addressed. The development of the field of river rehabilitation kept pace with this political, institutional and economic change. Changes in legislation provided the legal backing and some pressure on resource agencies to aim for catchment management and, as a subset of this, rehabilitation (Gippel and Collier 1998). This also created an environment in which the river rehabilitation received the government and public attention and funding that allowed for the rapid progress in the field. Many programmes initiated at either National or State levels spurred further research and development. Ten of the significant events or initiatives of the 1990s considered to be amongst the ‘drivers’ of river rehabilitation development are discussed. Of these, perhaps the most significant in terms of the ongoing research into river rehabilitation was the formation of the Cooperative Research Centres (CRCs). These are formal alliances between government, private industries, universities and other institutions. The CRC for iv Catchment Hydrology and the CRC for Freshwater Ecology are key institutions in the ongoing development of rehabilitation science, practice and guidelines. 3. The development of river rehabilitation This chapter discusses the growth of the field of river rehabilitation in Australia from the early ‘pioneering’ years of the 1990s. The identification of research and development requirements for rehabilitation in the later years of the decade, and the publication of national-level guidelines for rehabilitation illustrate the extent to which cognisance had, by then, been taken of the importance of this field by funders, government agencies and research institutions alike. The issues identified as requiring research attention included the use of planning, objective-setting and evaluation in individual projects, addressing the multidisciplinary nature of the task, and building communication between practitioners, researchers and managers. An international conference held in Adelaide in 1999, ‘The challenge of rehabilitating Australia’s streams’, attracted further national and international attention to this field. Again this represented the growth in the field, although it was felt, in review of this conference, that the papers presented were largely qualitative by nature and lacked a sound scientific basis. This is a contemporary issue receiving research attention at present. The present situation in Australian rehabilitation is discussed in this chapter in the light of the types of activity underway; programmes and initiatives; available tools such as framework documents, national-level guidelines, assessment and priority setting models, and legislative and institutional frameworks; and integrated catchment management, of which rehabilitation is considered a sub-set. The rehabilitation of metropolitan rivers has somewhat different components to that of non-