4t Training – 4t CONSULTANTS

June 2017 News

Cheryl Tomkins — Wed, 26 Jul 2017 02:57:20 +0000

Surface Water Course – Enroll Now!

4T will be running our certified Surface Water Course on 1st August 2017, in Emerald.

This course is an accredited unit in the Certificate III in Water Quality Monitoring Course.

The course is suitable for students of environmental studies, landholders and employees/contractors to the resources and agriculture industries. If you or your employees are taking water samples for compliance purposes, this course will satisfy the requirement that persons undertaking sampling must be “appropriately qualified”.

If you are interested in participating, please contact our office for pricing and enrollment forms.

Phone: 07 49824100 Email: admin@4t.com.au

Fitzroy Basin gets a pass mark

For the third year running, the Fitzroy Partnership for River Health Report Card has give the Basin a Grade of B (Good) for river condition in 2015-2016.

Even better news was that for the first time, no catchments were graded ‘Poor’ in the ‘Toxicants’ category.

CQUniversity Research Fellow Dr Nicole Flint commented that ‘Ecology’ category data is a critical omission. Ecology data is only available for four of the 11 freshwater catchments.

“Increasing and expanding the range of data available for habitat indicators such as riparian condition, and biological indicators such as macroinvertebrates and fish, is a high priority,” Dr Flint says. “While biological indicators can be relatively expensive to monitor, they provide a more comprehensive picture of the river condition than can be determined from water quality sampling alone.”

Having been monitoring throughout the entire Fitzroy Basin for 20 years, we couldn’t agree more. Ecological monitoring can be expensive, but not as expensive as the consequences of not having the correct data to inform planning decisions.

Get ready for a new planning system

Speaking of planning, the Qld Government’s new planning system came into force on July 3. The new system will hopefully enable genuine community engagement in the planning system, and stronger provisions for development decision makers.

One of the aims of the new planning systems is to allow for greater community input into planning decisions.

“Development must not come at the expense of community participation and engagement, so new measures have been introduced to provide greater transparency and certainty for Queenslanders.”

You can learn about the planning system via the online learning hub.

CH Wildlife Carer Group

Even though our rescued joey Peter Roo is now healthy and leading the life of a grown-up red kangaroo, the work of the CH Wildlife Carer Group continues, and they still need your support.

To support the CH Wildlife Carer Group financially, with your time or other resources, please contact them directly:

24/7 hotline: 0475 288 301

Email:             chwildlifecarers@gmail.com
Facebook:      Central Highlands Wildlife Carers
Website:     chwc.org.au

Surface Water Quality Training Workshops – Good decisions need good data

Cheryl Tomkins — Fri, 24 Jun 2016 07:51:08 +0000

It’s been a busy week for Ian, Christina and Jeanie, with two surface water quality training workshops in two days – one in Emerald and one in Theodore. Having Christina and Jeanie present was a bit like “getting the old band back together again”, as it was Christina and Jeanie who delivered the very first surface water quality workshops way back in 2005. The course has undergone some changes over the subsequent 11 years, but it still has the same purpose:

to help people to understand the importance of water quality, and how we measure and assess quality
to ensure that every sample taken is accurate, reliable and repeatable.

Decisions made on water samples can have very long-term consequences We know that the water quality sampling that we, and our trainees, perform is used for making important and expensive planning and management decisions. Decisions that can have very long-term effects on our water ecosystems. So it’s important that sampling techniques are correct, and that people taking samples understand exactly why they are doing so. A mixed group of students The attendees were a mixed group, with landholders, mine and industrial site enviros, council employees and private industry represented. We even had two trainees who travelled all the way from Innisfail to attend. Hopefully they will take their new knowledge back to North Queensland and apply it to water monitoring in their own area. Thanks to Fitzroy Basin Association (FBA), Central Highlands Regional Resources Use Planning Cooperative (CHRRUP) and the Dawson Catchment Coordinating Association (DCCA) for their support and hosting these workshops. Thanks also to the Australian Agricultural College Emerald Campus for allowing us to use their training room. Many of the trainees have requested additional training in specific areas, so we’ll have to get busy designing some additional courses over the next few months.

[Image by licence from Alamy Limited]

Getting To Know Your Groundwater

Cheryl Tomkins — Tue, 12 Jan 2016 06:08:57 +0000

Groundwater is one of Australia’s most precious, but least understood, natural resources. 21% of the water used in Australia is Groundwater, so it forms a vitally important element of Australia’s economic prosperity.

The biggest use of Australia’s groundwater is for agricultural production, so it’s not just the quantity of water available that matters to our agribusiness sector – it’s the quality as well.

To help landholders to understand this valuable asset, 4T Consultants has developed a “Getting to Know Your Groundwater” Workshop. The workshop was originally developed by Fiona Murchie as part of her participation in the National Rural Women’s Coalition E-Leaders program. It has undergone an update and we are very pleased to be presenting the workshop throughout Central Queensland in early 2016 in conjunction with the Fitzroy Basin Association, the Dawson Catchment Coordination Association and Capricornia Catchments. Groundwater experts will be joining the workshop via Skype, so participants will have the opportunity to ask questions.

For the first two workshops, we will be joining forces with AgForce as well, for a full day of groundwater training and information. AgForce will be presenting an Adanced CSG Negotiation Workshop, to bring workshop attendees up to date with the latest developments in groundwater regulation in Queensland.

The dates for the workshops that have been confirmed so far for the first half of 2016 are:

March 1st Taroom (Joint workshop with AgForce)
March 2nd Injune (Joint workshop with AgForce)
March 8th Middlemount
March 10th Rockhampton

More workshops are planned for other centres, but the dates have not yet been confirmed, so we will post updates as they become available.

For booking details for the Taroom and Injune , download the brochure here.

These workshops are supported by the Fitzroy Basin Association through funding from the Australian Government’s National Landcare Programme – Sustainable Agriculture.