Hawkesbury Monitoring

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  Water Quality Station  

Water Quality Monitoring

The Hawkesbury-Nepean River System is a major social, environmental and economic asset for NSW. This extensive estuary system encompasses the Hawkesbury-Nepean River, Pittwater, Brisbane Water and Broken Bay. Currently the six councils that border the tidal waterways of the system are working in collaboration to develop a whole-of-system Coastal Management Program (CMP). The councils involved in the CMP are: Central Coast Council, Northern Beaches Council; Ku-ring-gai Council; Hornsby Shire Council; Hawkesbury City Council and The Hills Shire Council. A strategic approach to monitoring the estuary has been developed among the Partner Councils and Sydney Water in order to address issues at an estuary scale independently of jurisdictional boundaries by reducing duplications in monitoring effort.

This webportal showcases the monitoring that Hornsby Shire Council undertakes using remotely deployed water quality stations along the Lower Hawkesbury estuary, specifically between Wisemans Ferry and Broken Bay including the Berowra Creek and Mullet Creek arms. Currently seven real-time water quality stations are deployed measuring a variety of water quality parameters at a 15-30min intervals. The parameters measured are water temperature, salinity, chlorophyll-a and turbidity. At Calabash Point information on air temperature, photosynthetically active radiation and thermistor chain is also provided. This station has been upgraded in 2021 to also monitor some of the variables at two depths: 1 metre and 5 metres.

Council has also been monitoring water quality in the estuary since the mid 90’s using portable water quality sondes and collecting grab samples for laboratory analysis. Through this program we collect information on parameters like water temperature, pH, dissolved oxygen, salinity, suspended matter, turbidity, total and available nitrogen, total and available phosphorus, bacteria and chlorophyll-a. Further information on this program including the latest waterway health review can be found on Hornsby Council’s water quality page.