A code that helps bank water in the landscape
Heading into this winter, most climate predictions show it will be dryer and warmer than normal. However there is no place for complacency when it comes to soil moisture, even when we’ve just had three years of above average rainfall. In fact, it is during these wetter times that you can be banking water in the landscape for use during the next dry spell. In 2018, after nine months of virtually no rain in the top of the Mulloon catchment, water was still trickling out of the leaky weir at Peter’s Pond on the MCNF Home Farm. That water was still there because our landscape rehydration work had banked water in the adjoining landscape which then fed the system during the dry months.
Water still trickling through the landscape rehydration infrastructure at Peter’s Pond in 2018.
National Code
Frustratingly, I know that many more catchments could have been hydrated in readiness for the coming dry periods if on-ground landscape rehydration works hadn’t been held up by an overly complex and heavily regulated bureaucracy in all states and territories. But as with dehydrated, degraded land, we have a solution, and that solution is called a National Code of Practice for Landscape Rehydration and Regeneration.
Led by Mulloon Law Committee member Dr Gerry Bates, a National Code has been effectively drafted as a solution which could be put into practice around Australia with government support. The next step is to have Federal Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek onboard and work with state and territory governments to implement it. That shouldn’t be too difficult, should it? We wait in anticipation.
Landscape rehydration infrastructure being installed at Mt Pleasant Station, QLD in 2019.
Complying with the existing regulations around on-ground landscape rehydration works is likely the main reason why many landholders baulk at undertaking these works. It is also exacerbated by the associated costs being blown out by duplication and unnecessarily detailed studies and reports. Like the National Construction Code, a National Code of Practice for Landscape Rehydration and Regeneration would make this work more affordable and ensure a higher quality of constructed works.
Hopefully I’ll be reporting progress in this area in the next ‘Spring Resilience’!