Land use and management

Sydney's drinking water catchment is home to over 125,000 residents in 13 local government areas.

To protect water quality, landholders who live within Sydney catchment areas are responsible for appropriately managing the land that they reside upon.

Managing land use is about ensuring water systems aren’t being polluted by human interference, whether that is limiting the use of pesticides or ensuring groundcover is maintained to the adequate level.

To manage the land around dams and catchments, we partner with other agencies to ensure water quality is maintained. This means we collaborate with agencies such as:

• NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service
• local councils
• landholders
• government agencies
• Aboriginal Land Councils
• industry and community groups

Living in the Sydney drinking water catchment means you have a role in keeping the local environment and waterways healthy. You can do this by ensuring you manage:

• waste appropriately
• the use of pesticides and chemicals
• weeds, such a noxious or aquatic weeds
• pest control, such as wild dogs, rabbits, foxes etc.
• groundcover

Effective land management is about limiting and removing the risks for our water systems to become polluted. To find out more about how you can better manage your land to help protect our drinking water catchment visit, keeping waterways healthy.