Over the past five years, Healthy Waterways volunteers have amassed a wide range of skills in water quality and aquatic ecosystem health monitoring. Regular training has been given to volunteers and a great deal of understanding of river processes and water quality issues has been shown by individual volunteers. Reef Catchments has sought to capture this understanding through its new Healthy Waterways monitoring program. 

Since 2002 Healthy Waterways community volunteers have been collecting quality assured water quality data from across the region. Monthly monitoring has occurred at more than 30 sites and flood events have been sampled at more than 20 sites over the past five years. The Healthy Waterways volunteer monitoring has provided valuable data on the region’s waterways. This information has been used in combination with other data sets to establish water quality objectives and targets for the 33 Catchment Management areas within the Mackay Whitsunday region. Data collected by volunteers has also informed the development of the Mackay Whitsunday Water Quality Improvement Plan.

In July 2008 Reef Catchments and the three catchment and landcare groups in the Mackay Whitsunday Region ran workshops in each integrated catchment area to identify and prioritise key water quality issues across the region. Healthy waterways volunteers worked to identify water quality issues and prioritise these for projects. The group then went to seek funding for priority projects.

Reef Catchments believes that the knowledge held by Healthy Waterways volunteers is a valuable resource and that by addressing key concerns raised by the community we can more successfully engage the community in natural resource management.