Monitoring changes in water quality in an urbanising catchment

Increasing population in the Illawarra coastal region, some 100 km south of Sydney, is leading to the transformation of large areas from rural dairying to urban residential land use. To allow proper planning guidelines to be put into place, a selected catchment, Cooback Creek, is being monitored before, during, and after urban development. Continuous recording of stream turbidity is being supplemented by stage sampling of water from the stream. The stage samples are analysed for a full range of water quality parameters. This paper describes the initial phases of the project and provides details of the catchment and instrumentation installed. Preliminary water quality analyses are also presented.