Urban Rivers and Catchment Program
- Project value$1.7 million
- Contractor nameBurnie City Council NRM team
- Completion Date18 February 2028
Burnie City Council was successful in obtaining $1.7 million in grant funding through the Australian Governments Urban Rivers Catchment program.
$200 million was shared across the nation to help restore the health of our urban waterways for native plants, animals, and local communities.
Nearly nearly half of all nationally listed threatened animals - and a quarter of threatened plants - occur in urban areas. They actually share these areas with 96% of Australia’s population.
The Urban Rivers and Catchment program will improve 9 kilometres of riparian corridor in the catchments of Romaine Creek and Shorewell Creek to benefit locally endemic freshwater crayfish and other native species.
It will exclude stock access to waterways, remove environmental weeds, undertake revegetation with local native species, and install several gross pollutant traps.
This program has a 3-year projected timeline, and has commenced as part of Burnie City Councils Annual Plan and Budget for 2025-26.
Project Updates:
February 2026
Through the Urban Rivers and Catchments Program funded by the Australian Government, BCC is rehabilitating 9 km of Romaine and Shorewell Creek to improve the water quality and habitat of endangered species and other animals that live there. Council so far has established 28 agreements with landowners to progress works on their land.
This project has commenced, and you may have noticed contractors doing weed control along the creeks. Other things that are progressing in the rural areas are the installation of fencing to remove stock from the creeks and providing off-stream watering points to improve the water quality for stock. Fencing off the creeks will improve the water quality for the animals that live in it by allowing either the natural regeneration of plants or the project will provide local native plants for landowners to plant in these fenced areas.
In the urban areas, council will also be controlling weeds and revegetating large areas of previously mown land that will increase the vegetation buffer for the creek’s inhabitants. Some of these inhabitants that we regularly see are the Giant Freshwater Crayfish, Burnie Burrowing Crayfish, Latham’s Snipe and Swift Parrot.
Council will also install Gross Pollutant Traps at three sites in the Shorewell Creek, to stop sediment and contaminants from entering the creek. We will also be arranging clean-ups of rubbish in the creek and will be looking for volunteers to help with planting along both creeks in autumn and winter.