Yarrawonga Chronicle

Hub to offer solutions to manage waterways

Researchers from Charles Sturt University will lead a new research hub to facilitate the “out-of-the-box ideas” required to ensure successful management of regional Australia’s waterways.

Funded by the Federal Government, the $3.6 million Next Generation Water Engineering and River Management Hub will see Australian and international industry partners, universities, researchers and businesses, as well as Traditional Owners, develop solutions to the current and future problems threatening inland Australia’s waterways, including poor water quality and diminishing fish stocks.

“(The initiative ) will act as an opportunity for us to trial innovative approaches for water management solutions which regional Australia needs but which don’t really fit under any of the current frameworks,” CSU Professor Lee Baumgartner said.

Projects the hub will undertake include:

• Partnering with a university in Germany to implement best-practice design of a fish-safe hydro power station — the first time this technology has been applied in the Southern Hemisphere.

• Restoring traditional fish management strategies and techniques of First Nations people in the northern basin.

• Partnering with an American agency which has developed a remote water quality testing unit which provides real-time data.

• Implementing a community-led fish tagging program.

• Field testing an innovative ‘fish pump’ to provide fish migrations at large dams.

Prof Baumgartner said collaboration with the University of NSW would be a crucial cog in the hub’s work, with that university’s water research laboratory having been operational for almost 70 years.

The hub project will also support eight new regionally based positions within the university.

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2021-09-14T07:00:00.0000000Z

2021-09-14T07:00:00.0000000Z

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