Cost-effective strategies to reduce nitrogen and phosphorus emissions in an urban river catchment

Associate Professor Ben White and Dr Maksym Polyakov, from the University of Western Australia, will present information about how to reduce emissions in an urban river catchment.

Emissions of nutrients from non-point sources such as gardens, agriculture, public open space, sports fields and septic tanks pose an ongoing threat to the ecological health of Western Australia’s Swan Canning river system, a system with high recreational and ecological value to the Perth community.

Due to the nature and diversity of diffuse sources, actions to reduce or mitigate emissions from non-point sources are generally broad or act indirectly on the source(s). These include existing programs such as education of households, soil amendment, removal of septic tanks and investment in constructed wetlands, as well as more radical changes such as banning standard fertilizers. There is a desire to consider the effectiveness of each of these actions in reducing nutrients within a catchment, to better inform allocation of scarce resources.

This presentation will describe the findings of an economic analysis of a catchment-wide approach to reducing nitrogen and phosphorus levels in the Swan-Canning river system. It considers policy and management actions needed for achieving reduction targets.

This research was undertaken by the Cooperative Research Centre for Water Sensitive Cities as part of Research Project A1.3: Economic incentives and instruments.  

Click here to download a copy of the published report.