Education has been an essential component of the Lawry Plunkett Reserve Project. Education is a vital part of any long term integrated project because it is the people who use the catchment who will value and care for places like Lawry Plunkett Reserve. However, the users of the catchment may also be inadvertently contributing to its degradation. The area around Lawry Plunkett Reserve is largely residential, but other important users of the catchment include business owners, visitors and tourists and commercial and residential gardeners.
In June 2002, a Stormwater Trust grant enabled Council to hire a full time project officer to research, coordinate and implement a $60,000 education campaign. A detailed survey was conducted at the beginning of the project, to find out how much residents and businesses in the catchment know and care about stormwater. To gain an insight into the community’s main concerns, a series of consultation evenings with the Balmoral Environment Network followed. This research and engagement with the community has boosted the success of the education campaign by getting key messages to relevant users and residents in the catchment.
One of the important themes of the education campaign has been to highlight the close link between everyday behaviour – such as gardening practice, dog walking, car washing – and stormwater quality. To help communicate this in a practical, hands on way, a series of free workshops have been held for home gardeners who live in the catchment, and commercial gardeners who work in the catchment. These demonstrated good gardening methods that help gardens thrive while preventing the escape of weeds and other pollutants into waterways.
The second key theme of the education campaign is that Sydney Harbour has an extremely rich and diverse ecology that must be protected from stormwater pollutants. Although Sydney Harbour is visible from nearly everywhere in Mosman and has shaped the Municipality, the amazing diversity of Sydney Harbour marine life is not so well known.
Adjacent Balmoral Beach has been a great location to spread these messages. A range of successful community events have been held at the popular Beach and Esplanade, including information stalls and real life marine displays, barbeques, festivals and screenings of videos featuring the marine life of Mosman. To help reinforce the message, special sandwich bags with stormwater awareness messages are being developed and distributed to local cafes for use throughout the year.
Community consultation also revealed a need for schools to be involved in the project. Council is delivering a full day interactive education program for local schools that makes the link between what happens in a catchment, stormwater quality, and the health of marine life in Sydney Harbour. Students participate in customised video presentations, role plays and full costume drama, drain stencilling activities, conducting questionnaires with local business and café owners and water quality investigation.
