A Baywood Chase Lake and Tallow Creek clean-up is being organised by former councillor Cate Coorey, with an information night planned for Thursday, September 26, from 6.30pm at the Byron Bay Services Club.
She told The Echo, ‘From Baywood Chase through Suffolk Park, the catchment area of Tallow Creek is impacted by pollutants, which have a negative impact on the creek. Tallow Creek is an ICOLL – an Intermittently Closing and Opening Lake Lagoon, which makes it a unique place, but it is under a lot of pressure’.
‘The Byron Coastal and ICOLL Centre (BCIC), is commencing a project to involve our local community to do some science detective work in the Tallow catchment area – all the way up to Baywood Chase – and find ways to clean it up.
Digital imagery
‘Working with Alex Brawn, a Masters student from UTS School of Landscape Architecture, we will start by looking at what is going on with Tallow Creek using the latest in digital imagery,’ says Cate Coorey, who is also president of BCIC.
‘Alex’s presentation will show where the problems are and we can take this knowledge out on country, gathering real-life information and begin to improve water health upstream from Tallow Creek.
‘We will invite people to join us in finding ways to help revive the creek to how it might have been when the Arakwal were the only inhabitants of the area.
‘Starting with a community information session, we will introduce everyone to Tallow Creek and everything that is affecting it, most of that being human activity.
‘One key area of interest is Baywood Chase Lake; in high flow times, water makes its way through drainage channels and ends up in Tallow Creek.
‘The Lake has very poor water quality and is a source of pollution that we need to address.
Citizen scientists
‘We hope that interested locals will get on board. We will train them to identify problems and use digital meters to assess water quality, particularly in these upstream areas from where pollutants are making their way into the catchment.
‘After the introductory session we want to get started, and we’ll plan some days getting out there and being citizen scientists’, she added.
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