Announcing an innovative, community-led water stewardship program
Mulloon Institute Chair Matt Egerton-Warburton, CEO/Managing Director Carolyn Hall and WaterNSW’s Stuart Naylor at the Mulloon Rehydration Conference in 2024.
A groundbreaking water stewardship program is taking shape in the Sydney Drinking Water Catchment (SDWC), thanks to an innovative partnership between WaterNSW, Mulloon Institute, and The Ian Potter Foundation. With climate change and landscape degradation posing serious threats to water quality, this initiative is a critical step toward restoring the resilience of our waterways and supporting the landholders who help protect them.
Why Water Stewardship Matters
The Sydney Drinking Water Catchment (SDWC) spans an enormous 16,000 square kilometres, with 38% of this land used for agriculture. Around 60% of New South Wales’ population relies on water from these catchments. Yet, as climate pressures mount and landscapes become increasingly vulnerable, ensuring a reliable supply of clean water is becoming more challenging than ever.
“We want to see landholders and communities continue to regenerate waterways and landscapes and increase regenerative agriculture,” says Ronan Magaharan, Executive Manager Operations at WaterNSW. “We cannot regenerate degraded landscapes and improve water quality without a much deeper consideration of water stewardship. Collaboration is central for WaterNSW and our role to safeguard the health of the Greater Sydney drinking water catchment. Mulloon Institute are leaders in this work and are an ideal partner to help drive this change.”
Orroral Valley South, part of the SDWC.
A Collaborative Approach to Landscape Restoration
The newly launched Water Stewardship Program is designed to support landholders and communities in restoring local water cycles, improving ecosystem health, and enhancing climate resilience. Through funding and hands-on support, the program will help farmers and other land managers implement solutions such as revegetation, natural water retention systems, and other nature-based approaches to land and water care.
Carolyn Hall, Managing Director and CEO of Mulloon Institute, highlights the power of collaboration: “Mulloon Institute works with many motivated people eager to heal landscapes. They include farmers, Landcare networks, First Nations custodians, Fire Fighters, local councils, water utilities, universities, and school groups. Everyone wants to play their part. Unfortunately, there are many barriers to collaboration, and far too much work is falling to under-resourced volunteers. We urgently need a well-designed funding pathway for community-led projects and are thrilled that we can now make this happen. This will enable us to share our extensive experience in landscape rehydration with a broader range of landholders and communities.”
Reeds growing on a flow structure, dissapating water energy and flow
The Road Ahead
With a focus on education, hands-on training, and demonstration projects, the Water Stewardship Program aims to build a culture of water responsibility that extends across the region. By empowering communities and landholders with the knowledge and resources they need, this initiative is a crucial step toward securing the long-term health of our catchments.
Recognising the need for a strong foundation, Mulloon Institute successfully sought funding from The Ian Potter Foundation to pilot the program. This investment will enable WaterNSW and Mulloon Institute to develop and refine scalable solutions that can be implemented across the Sydney Catchment Area and beyond.
This is just the beginning of a new era in water stewardship—one where collaboration, innovation, and nature-based solutions come together to protect the future of our most precious resource.