A town hall meeting at the Lismore Regional Gallery on Saturday has called for NSW Labor government action on river health in the Richmond River catchment.
The meeting was held during Riverfest 2025, which was a series of events and activities held along the river last week.
NSW Greens MP, Sue Higginson, said in a media release that she hosted the evening and that nearly 100 people attended.
There were presentations by Richmond Landcare’s Louissa Rogers, OzFish’s Ashley Castle, Widjabul Wa-bal native title holder Tracey King, Kayak 4 Earth and Tinny Trip participant Steve Posselt, Richmond Riverkeeper Founding Member Kristin den Exter, and Rous County Councillor, Elia Hauge.
Higginson says she will be collaborating with native title holders, stakeholders and community members to release an update of the Revive the Richmond River plan in the coming weeks.
She said, ‘We all know too well that our river, the Richmond, is one of the sickest rivers in the country, and that years of neglect and continuous harm have resulted in mass fish kills, the demise of industry and recreation, the destruction of nature and culture and the near-extinction of species’.
‘It was very inspiring that so many people came together to commit to our community’s clear vision to revive the Richmond River catchment so that our river is drinkable, swimmable and fishable once again’.
2019 revival plan
‘In 2019, we first laid down a plan to revive the Richmond River, and it was welcomed by so many at the time as inspiring, hopeful and desperately necessary. It is so good to learn that initiatives in the plan have been taken up by others, and are coalescing as our community demands for greater action to rescue and revive the Richmond River’, she said.
‘There was a lot of knowledge and expertise in the room. We were able to capture that knowledge with a focus on the solutions to revive the river through riparian restoration, the reintroduction of oyster reefs, soft-engineered nature-based solutions and the techniques and strategies the people of the Bundjalung Nation used to protect the river for centuries’.
Single overarching governing authority
‘The community identified the desperate need for a single overarching governing authority that has the purpose, powers and resources to prioritise and co-ordinate reviving the Richmond River. The catchment is some 7,000 square kilometres, covers four Local Government Areas and involves a County Council responsible for water supply.
‘Both the State Government and Federal Government and a number of different Native Title holders and Local Aboriginal Land Councils exercise legal and cultural responsibilities throughout the catchment and over the River. Then there are a plethora of community organisations who have interests and exercise responsibility for various programs across the whole catchment. There is no wonder the need for a Richmond River Commissioner – or something similar – is being called for as an urgent priority now’.
Higginson said, ‘It was clear that the community is doing so much good work, but we need more political will and focus to put all of the solutions into action. I will now revise and update the 2019 plan to “Revive the Richmond River” to include the wealth of knowledge in our community so that together we can better prosecute our case for a drinkable, swimmable and fishable river to key decision-makers in the Minns Labor government,”
‘We are so fortunate to have such a self-empowered and mobilised community, we even have the Richmond River Keeper, which is a brilliant initiative, doing excellent work. Riverfest has been incredible so far, but we do need our Governments to step up further, to meet us where we are at and to get more action happening on the ground,’ Higginson added.
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