Water Quality

Water is a scarce and essential natural resource.

Conserving and maintaining water quality and preventing or reducing water pollution protects our water quality and is essential to maintaining the health of our environment and our own quality of life.

Did you know? Stormwater is the biggest source of water pollution and there is a lot we can all do to prevent it. Remember, the drain is just for rain.

To continue to protect our waterways, Council's Water Quality Monitoring Program is used to determine compliance with the relevant national and state water quality monitoring and management guidelines.

Water Quality Monitoring Program

We undertake routine water quality testing at a number of sites within the Local Government Area (LGA) to:

  • compare the water quality results between the sampling sites across the LGA, including the urban and non-urban landscapes
  • monitor microbial levels at popular recreational sites
  • provide direction and assist in the development of stormwater management programs
  • undertake long term monitoring of the waterways to assess trends in water quality over time to understand the effects of changes such as climate change and the effects of elevated nutrient and microbial levels.

Monitoring locations

Monitoring water quality informs us on the health of our local waterways. We regularly sample and monitor 13 sites within the Georges River and the Nepean River catchments.

Water quality results

These results from the water samples are compared against the National Guidelines for Fresh and Marine Water Quality, developed by the Australian and New Zealand Environment and Conservation Council (ANZECC 2000).