Environmental Action

The Rivermont watershed has been monitored quarterly since 2011 by Riverwatch, a volunteer group with a laboratory contract and fourteen years of consistent methodology. Their data is the only continuous environmental record the district has, and until this year it was not used in any council decision.

What the record shows

Nitrate concentrations downstream of the Kelvin outfall have risen in eleven of the last fourteen years. Upstream, they have not. The cause is not disputed by anybody who has read the reports; it is a combined sewer overflow that operates far more often than its permit anticipated.

• Permitted overflow events per year: 12
• Recorded events in 2024: 61

Three commitments

1. Adopt the Riverwatch data as the district’s official environmental record, with funding for the laboratory contract so it does not depend on donations.
2. A funded clean-up program, paid from the utilities levy, targeting the Kelvin outfall first because that is where the data points.
3. Rooftop solar on every public building by 2032 — 41 buildings, costed at $6.8m, with a payback period the finance office puts at nine years.

A measurement nobody acts on is a hobby. A measurement written into the decision is a policy.

Getting there

Fourteen years of quarterly sampling by volunteers is what made this arguable at all. The next fourteen are what will make it stick.