Dealing with salinity in Wheatbelt Valleys - Department of Water

INTRODUCTION
The Lake Chinocup Catchment Resource
Management Committee had its origins in 1996,
when challenged by the Minister for the Environment
at the time, Mr Peter Foss, to show community
support for landcare within the Lake Chinocup
Catchment. This was because, as a community, we
were supporting the application from a member of
our community to mine gypsum from the A-class
Lake Chinocup Reserve. The community had to give
guarantees to do landcare work in an effort to save
the reserve from salinity. In exchange, gypsum
would be able to be mined from the reserve. In
2000 mining commenced.
During the time that negotiations were occurring
between the community, the mining proponent and
the Government, much progress occurred on the
local landcare front:
• The community drafted a Catchment
Management Plan, with the assistance of the
Departments of Agriculture, Conservation,
Regional Development and Environmental
Protection.
THE CHINOCUP STORY
Barbara Morrell 1 , Tom Hatton 2 and Peter Curry 3
Morrell, Hatton and Curry
• Two of the sub-catchments went through the
Focus Catchment process with the Department
of Agriculture.
• An NHT project to set up a bore monitoring
program was implemented.
• The Committee became incorporated.
• Six hundred thousand trees were planted over a
five year period.
• The Pingrup town was accepted in the Rural
Towns program.
• Two thousand hectares of remnants were
fenced.
You can see by the above list that the farmers living
in the Lake Chinocup Catchment were very active in
two ways, firstly through their own smaller
catchment groups and secondly through the larger
Lake Chinocup Catchment.
Unfortunately, while all of this activity was occurring,
the level of salinity increased by two percent across
the catchment.
• Baseline data was collected, against which
targets and milestones could be set. DESCRIPTION OF THE LAKE CHINOCUP
AREA
• The mining proponent agreed to pay the
community a royalty of 50 cents per tonne to be
used to implement the Catchment Plan.
• An NHT grant was received to employ a
Community Landcare Coordinator.
• An NHT grant was obtained by two of the subcatchments
to revegetate areas and protect
remaining remnants.
1
Chair, Lake Chinocup Catchment Resource Management Committee
2
CSIRO Land and Water, Perth
3
Department of the Environment
– 1 –
Location
The Lake Chinocup Catchment is located in the Shire
of Kent and takes in approximately 60% of the land
in the Shire. The area of the catchment is 3500 sq
km, which includes many large Nature Reserves
including the Lake Chinocup Reserve (19,825 ha) and
part of the Lake Magenta Reserve (~94,000 ha).