MONITORING WATER QUALITY ON FARMS: THE HERBERT WATER QUALITY MONITORING PROJECT

THE HERBERT River District is located adjacent to the Great Barrier Reef Lagoon and growers in the Herbert sugar industry wished to obtain a better understanding of surface water quality on their farms. However little water quality data were available from catchments consisting entirely of sugarcane. The Herbert Water Quality Monitoring project was established with the aim of establishing a network of water quality monitoring sites in small catchments within the Herbert cane area and where growers were given the responsibility for water sampling and measurement of water quality attributes. The paper reviews previous water quality research in the area, provides details of the sampling sites and measurement procedures and presents an example of data collected at one monitoring site. The project has been effective in developing simple, low cost methods of measuring on-farm water quality and the challenge is to increase growers’ knowledge and understanding of runoff water quality so that it eventually becomes a routine tool for nutrient management in a sustainable farming system.