Peel Inlet and Harvey Estuary System Management Strategy ...

EPA Report on the Peel-Harvey Progress and Compliance Report, 2003
• implement appropriate monitoring to measure the success of the strategy (EPA,
1988, p. 16).
The parts to be played by the two main components of the management strategy were set
out by the EPA in its 1988 assessment and are covered in Table 1 in the ERC report.
At the time of the assessment, there was a sense of urgency as it was the view of many
scientists that the magnitude of the Nodularia problem threatened the ongoing health of
the estuaries and that further significant decline with a move to an even more
environmentally unstable and less predictable situation was quite likely. Scientists were
concerned about the likely “collapse” of estuary health and concern that if such an
extreme collapse occurred, it would become impossible to achieve restoration to a
healthy estuary system.
It became clear that a management package was required that would foster a dynamic,
adaptive environmental management approach and that it would need to be underpinned
in the long term by a robust legal and administrative framework for management.
The lessons learned in defining the problems and from developing and implementing
management of the Peel-Harvey are transferable to most of the other coastal plain
lagoonal estuaries in WA, as well as to catchment management in general. However,
Peel-Harvey is unique in the amount of money spent on research to define the problems
(over $10 million) and to implement management solutions (over $60 million). It is most
unlikely that in excess of $60 million will ever be spent again in Western Australia on a
catchment scale solution to a nutrient-related environmental problem.
The predictions about the post-management performance of the estuary system made by
the EPA in 1988 (and before) have now been tested and have proved to be correct (see
Tables 2 and 7 of the Expert Review Committee Report).
3. THE PEEL-HARVEY EXPERT REVIEW COMMITTEE
The key specialists with direct experience in the research into, and development of, the
Peel-Harvey Management Strategy in the late 1980’s and early 1990’s were invited to
form the Expert Review Committee. The specialists are:
Ms Sally Robinson – legal and administrative framework for integrated catchment
management; Deputy Chairman of EPA during the initial stages of the review;
author of the EPA’s 1985 and 1988 assessment reports;
Dr John Yeates – agricultural practices and catchment management;
Dr David Deeley – estuary water quality and in-estuary management targets;
Dr Robert Humphries – estuary systems ecology and water quality;
Mr Geoffrey Bott – estuary management and Environmental Protection Policies.
Administrative support was provided by Ms Alanna Fandry.
To enable it to develop its advice, the Expert Review Committee (ERC):
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