What would it take to make the Yarra swimmable?

Support for making the Yarra River swimmable reached Town Hall, with prospect of cleaner and safer river brewing excitement in council chambers.

Melbourne Lord Mayor Nick Reece has publicly said that he believes the river can be swimmable before the year 2050 and, at the July 29 meeting, all councillors threw their support behind a motion that will see the City of Melbourne investigate how it can play a role in making this a reality.

However, while the idea of swimming has been quick to make the headlines and stir up a fervour, it presents a gargantuan task and will require collaboration between all tiers of government and key stakeholders.

Some experts argue it is too big to achieve, while others are more bullish about its potential and are confident that with the right planning and collaboration it can be achieved.

But momentum is growing. In Paris, a €1.6 billion clean-up of the River Seine has made it safe to swim in again for the first time in a century. The river was centre stage for the 2024 Olympic Games, and after the Games, the city will open more than 30 public swimming spots along the Seine and in Greater Paris.

The founder of Swimmable Cities, Matt Sykes, is a member of the bullish camp and labelled the task of making the Yarra River swimmable as the “Big Swim”.

Mr Sykes’s nod to Victoria’s Big Build, the state’s major infrastructure initiative delivering more than $100 billion into projects like the Suburban Rail Loop (SRL), may have been in jest. However, it does reflect how big of task making the Yarra swimmable is.

A task that some do not believe is worth it.

Water quality expert from RMIT, Dr Vincent Pettigrove, told Southbank News that it would be a “very expensive operation” that is impractical given the amount of storm water run-off that comes from the city.

“We have a lot of stormwater that comes off the streets that can have contaminants like dog faeces and a whole lot of different pollutants,” he said.

For the river to become swimmable, he said that there would have to be improved water-quality monitoring and stormwater mitigation strategies.

Dr Pettigrove suggested that eager swimmers should go to the local beaches or Warrandyte where the water is almost always suitable for swimming.

But for Mr Sykes, making the Yarra swimmable is both very real and achievable. He believes that between now and 2030, there could be a handful of pilot sites.

He does, however, have higher hopes for a 25-kilometre-long swimming trail from Dights Falls down to Port Phillip Bay.

For this to be achieved, the monitoring of water quality is something that Mr Sykes said will need to be improved.

Currently, Melbourne Water, in partnership with the Environment Protection Authority (EPA) Victoria, monitors the recreational water quality of the Yarra River at four locations during the summer months, and increasingly year-round.

The monitoring focuses on bacterial levels, particularly E. coli and blue-green algae, and the data collected informs the EPA’s Yarra Watch forecasts and contributes to annual report cards.

However, the current approach needs to be improved, according to Mr Sykes.

“To make swim zones viable you need real-time water monitoring; ideally public data available on site or in an app, not a 24 hour lag. That’s doable now, and it’s one of the first steps,” Mr Sykes said.

In addition to this, he believes strategic infrastructure like filtered ingress pipes or isolated pools where flows and contaminants are better managed, should be considered.

Melbourne Water head of waterway and catchment services northwest, Vix Penko, said, “Stormwater run-off is the biggest source of pollution; some reaches of the Yarra are swimmable in dry weather.”

Improving the Yarra’s water quality requires collaboration. That’s why Melbourne Water is working with the community and our partners to plant native trees and shrubs along the banks, deliver better stormwater management, and acting quickly to stop any pollution.

Despite, the need for improved water quality monitoring and infrastructure to transform the Yarra into a swimmable river, it is a challenge that will require inter-government collaboration, passionate entrepreneurship and community support

However, with Town Hall and industry leaders like Mr Sykes are willing to take it on, swimming safely in the Yarra appears to be a matter of when, rather than if.

When speaking of the challenges ahead, the head of the council’s environment portfolio Cr Davydd Griffiths echoed the words John F Kennedy and said that the council was choosing to do this not because it easy but because it is hard.

“We as a city have the capacity to take on large projects and see them through to fruition and that’s what I would like to see happening in this case,” Cr Griffiths said. •