The Gold Coast, just south of Brisbane on the east coast of Australia, is home to a perfect climate, picturesque beaches, and the famous Surfer’s Paradise. Winding its way through the Gold Coast is the Nerang River, with beautiful homes nestled against the riverbanks. The Nerang River is the largest and most significant river system on the Gold Coast, consisting of numerous canal and freshwater lake environments. The river provides the Gold Coast’s drinking water and plays a significant role in recreation and tourism. Hence, the Nerang River not only requires a standard of water quality capable of supporting aquatic/marine life and meeting appropriate environmental health standards for primary contact, but must also maintain the high aesthetic standard expected by both residents and visitors to the region.
Asia-Pacific ASA successfully secured a contract for water quality modeling with the Gold Coast City Council (GCCC), making it the first Australian Local Government to incorporate ASA’s water quality model, WQMAP. The GCCC will use WQMAP to assist with decision support in determining potential impacts caused by new developments to the Nerang River system, Gold Coast, Queensland, Australia.
A field program was established as part of the project to measure water quality parameters within the water column. Two forms of field data were used to determine the acute and chronic impacts on the river from local land use and runoff. The field program particularly focused on monitoring significant rainfall events, with more frequent sampling undertaken at these times. The second set of data consists of ten years worth of water quality measurements collected in the Nerang River system by the GCCC as part of their commitment to creating sustainable development in the Gold Coast region. The combination of the datasets and external forcing (i.e., wind, rainfall, freshwater inflow and water elevation) enabled a comprehensive understanding of the time-varying two-dimensional structure of these parameters within the Nerang River system.
Brian King and Sasha Zigic of Asia-Pacific ASA trained members of the GCCC to use WQMAP and worked actively with them to ensure that WQMAP meets all of their water quality management requirements. The GCCC currently uses WQMAP to analyze system dynamics and to predict the impacts of actual events or potential river design and management alternatives. They anticipate that the WQMAP system will be a useful tool in decision support for future land use consideration within the Nerang River region and for planning and monitoring the health of the Gold Coast waterways.
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