SWAMP: Accommodation Creek
Bottle number: 102
About the water
Collected at: Accommodation Creek, Gauging Station, Sundown Road, Ballandean, Queensland
(sometimes called Wallace's Dump)
151.83625, -28.807167
School weir, upstream of the Sundown Road bridge.
Collected by: SWAMP (Stanthorpe Water Assessment and Monitoring Project)
Was one of many sites selected for a shire wide monitoring program, involving the community, Landcare, regional body, Qld Dept of Natural resources, Qld Dept of Health (lab testing) and shire council. Criteria were: ease of access; public access; end of valley; representative of some land use.
Water quality:
| Turbidity: | 15 (tube) |
| pH: | 7.4 (pHScan hand held calibrated) |
| Nitrates: | n/a (kits are unreliable: reagent instability is an issue) |
| Salinity: | 340 (this is high for the site; med value is 230 µS high value is 410 low value is 70 25th perc is 160 75th perc is 300) |
| Phosphates: | n/a (kits are unreliable: reagent instability is an issue) |
| Dissolved oxygen: |
n/a (not done; upland water ways (flow/pools/etc), shade etc, may be useful if logged for several days at a time) |
No flow and lower than usual.
ACT Waterwatch says:
This site is nicely vegetated and seems to be quite stable. The water quality reflects this. EC is often elevated as pools dry up and salt concentrates
About the site
Small weir; established in the forties maybe to provide water for the school, silted up and unreliable as a water source, grazing along one side, unused cleared land on the other (DNR have their Gauging station there); local transfer station for 'domestic' waste is nearby.
What's going on:
The site is fairly stable.
- Bi-monthly monitoring ph; ec; temp and turbidity.
- Data is shared with regional body, Council and DNR.
- Some lab sampling (Nuts: filtered and unfiltered; pesticides and major Ions) was done initially but it is expensive.
- No kit nutrient sampling as the nitrate ned and visicolour phs are so unreliable as to be misleading.