“Many key processes are not functional and most critical habitats are impacted,” the Healthy, Land and Water science study says. Only this week, a $2.4 million plan to improve the Bremer River was launched, but two locals told of how some Ipswich residents dumped tyres and rims, and general junk into the river, despite knowing it would flow into Moreton Bay. The Bremer River in flood. Credit:Peter Doherty, Channel Seven And apathy was uncovered in a survey of 3500 people in the greater Brisbane area, which found only 30 per cent would make an effort to clean up their river’s edge, or their local stream. It was a marked contrast from the Sunshine and Gold coasts, where more than 70 per cent of residents said they would make the effort.

Professor Rod Connolly, from the Healthy Land and Water Science Committee, said he was deeply concerned about the findings. He said Moreton Bay provided about $7.56 billion of value to the south-east Queensland economy every year. More than 3.6 million people visited visited Moreton Bay in 2017, only slightly less than the combined 3.8 million who visited the Southern Great Barrier Reef, Whitsundays and Mackay in 2017, he said. “Moreton Bay is the jewel of SEQ but we are not doing enough to protect it,” Professor Connolly said. “While the Great Barrier Reef receives much of the focus and hundreds of millions of dollars in funding, Moreton Bay is being left behind.

“The bay directly and indirectly employs thousands of people and provides countless social and lifestyle benefits to the community, and all of that could be in peril unless we change our ways.” In August 2017 Bond University’s Daryl McPhee expressed the same concerns and called for a “Minister for Moreton Bay”. Senior ecologists warn that apathy towards the impact of silt flowing down the Brisbane River puts the $7.5 billion tourist, shipping and agricultural industries at risk. Professor Connolly warned that the conditions in Moreton Bay were likely to deteriorate. “Urbanisation, an increase in intense weather events and strong population growth continue to heap more pressure on the bay every year,” he said.

“When you couple that with a worrying lack of community initiative to help protect the bay, we have a serious problem on our hands.” Dr Paul Maxwell, Healthy Land and Water’s principal river scientist, agreed that Brisbane’s apathetic attitude towards its river was a problem. “Only 30 per cent feel they could be bothered doing anything positive about their local creek,” Dr Maxwell said. “That is completely different to Noosa (about 75 per cent) or the Gold Coast (about 70 per cent), which have positive attitudes to waterways,” he said. Mudflows into Moreton Bay from sediment carried downstream have more than doubled in the past decade, Australian Rivers Institute director Stuart Bunn said.

Dr Maxwell said the survey of 3500 resident showed people felt disconnected from their rivers. “Many people in Brisbane don’t see their local waterways as a nature experience," he said. The soil washing downstream into Moreton Bay has now spread across Moreton Bay. Dr Maxwell said Brisbane City Council had recently begun projects at schools to connect kids with their local creeks. “In many cases our local creeks have been covered up and gone underground,” he said.

“In storm water drains, or put into culverts, or they have been fenced off. “In some places you can’t get access to them.” But planners found a positive social experience developed around a suburb if there was access to waterways. “What we’ve found is that in the highly urbanised areas of Brisbane there is very little connection," he said. “What we've found is that if you block people off from their waterways they have a much lower engagement factor to do anything to improve the situation,” he said.