STEP representatives and many others with an interest in the well-being of the Lane Cove Valley attended a workshop on 16 August organised by Macquarie University. It was led by Dr Jo Rey from the Department of Indigenous Studies.

The restoration project is a recent Dhurag initiative aiming to return traditional custodial ontologies, knowledges, languages, practices to the Lane Cove River catchment in respectful alliance with existing stakeholders.

The goal is to bring best practices together for the well-being of Ngurra/country knowing that if we have healthy country we can have healthy people for a sustainable future.

The participants were representatives from local councils, academics, Macquarie Business Park companies, environment groups, indigenous communities, government organisations such as Sydney Water and NPWS.

The workshop was an initial idea sharing exercise to identify knowledge gaps, issues, barriers to improvement and initial priorities for action.

Urban planning impacts on the catchment

The workshop identified one of the major issues for the catchment is the lack of coordinated monitoring of water quality and modelling of stormwater management requirements. This is vital with the increasing incidence of extreme rainfall events and the rapid increase in residential development and associated infrastructure.

A matter of concern is that there are currently no flood-related development control provisions applying under the Ku-ring-gai local environmental plan. A number of catchment flood studies are being undertaken subject to funding from the NSW government but these are progressing very slowly.

Our planning system needs a major upgrade to improve stormwater controls and reduce pollution from run-off and erosion. All governments and organisations like Sydney Water have to be involved.