Healing Bilya – Restoring the Peel-Harvey Waterways
Funding Required: State and Federal funding support of $110 million over 10 years
Funding Purpose: Phase 1, Component 1 – Data Array ($1,500,000 project, seeking $1,000,000 Government funding). Phase 1, Component 2, – Research Infrastructure (seeking $1,850,000 Government funding). Phase 2 – Innovation Hub ($40 million project).
Contact: PHCC – admin@peel-harvey.org.au
The Peel-Harvey waterways are showing signs of another ecological collapse, as experienced in the 1980s. The Dawesville Cut, completed in 1994, reset the ecosystem at the time but is struggling to balance the declining rainfall and persistent nutrient inputs from agriculture and urban developments.
The waterways of the Peel region contribute $605 million economic value, over 2,000 jobs and attracts more than 3 million visitors each year. The health of the estuary and its waterways is essential to support all aspects of the region’s economy, ecological and conservation values, lifestyle and wellbeing of its community.
Large scale restoration is urgently needed to restore our waterways. Damage to the local environment will damage the local economy, local jobs, and put further pressure on the cost of living – the effects of which will be felt by families in the Peel region and beyond.
