SWAMP: Broadwater Creek
Bottle number: 104
About the water
Collected at: Broadwater Creek, Texas Road crossing, Broadwater (west of Stanthorpe), Queensland
151.882056, -28.655556
Near Broadwater School.
Collected by: SWAMP (Stanthorpe Water Assessment and Monitoring Project)
Was one of many sites which were selected for a shire wide monitoring program, involving the community, Landcare, regional body, Qld Dept of Natural resources (DNR), 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: | <10 (tube) |
| pH: | 5.8 (pHScan hand held calibrated) |
| Nitrates: | n/a (kits are unreliable: reagent instability is an issue) |
| Salinity: | 240 (this is a good value for the site; med value is 295 µS high value is 480 low value is 36 25th perc is 245 75th perc is 368) |
| 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 but rain in the previous week.
Waterwatch says:
This site is becoming more a wetland than a stream. That happens sometimes and is fine. Some data on nutrients would be useful, and clearly cattle should not be allowed access to waterways, as they like to stand in it, and that stirs up the bottom as well as adds nutrients from their waste. However, they do not seem to be having a strong impact as the turbidity is quite low.
About the site
Not the best site in the district but accessible, reasonably stable and is located just before the confluence of the Broadwater and Quart Pot Creek to form the Severn River.
Cattle have easy access to the site, it has a large sand slug (from earlier tin mining) in the stream, there is some horticulture upstream, some remant vegetation, riparian zone is in reasonable condition.
What's going on:
The site is subject to many impacts, mainly cattle; also readily clogs up with bulrushes etc.
- 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.