The health of our waterways is also impacted significantly by the amount of surface water that flows into them. Changing climatic conditions means that even without any human influence, this “natural” runoff is decreasing. The chart below showing a 30%+ decrease from the Upper Barwon Catchment into Barwon Water’s storage, which is used to supply the City of Greater Geelong.

As the river flows from this site in the Otways to Geelong, water is “harvested” by local communities and individuals for their own use, whether it is for irrigation of crops or gardens or for domestic stock.

Water also finds its way to the river as runoff from the surrounding catchment, but as the number of landholders increases across the catchment, more and more of this water is being trapped in dams and tanks.