Monitoring our water

Waterwatch is an ACT Healthy Waterways Project initiative. Waterwatch team up with locals to:

• watch over and conserve our waterways
• teach the community how to use water efficiently.

There are more than 200 Waterwatch volunteers who check water quality each month. This includes 243 spots across the area, covering an area of over 11,400 square kilometres.

They help to spot any issues with the health of our water systems early on. These issues are recorded in the yearly Catchment Health Indicator Program (CHIP) report.

There are also Environment Protection Officers regularly check issues in our water. They mainly check for blue-green algae at different spots in the urban lakes.

There are also rules for what our water quality should be for recreation [PDF 416.3 KB]. This tells us how to handle different kinds and levels of algae or bacteria. We alert the community through signs and notices in popular areas.

Learn more about blue-green algae, monitoring, lake closures, or alerts.