104 INSTITUTIONAL FRAMEWORK FOR TREES AND WATER MANAGEMENT The institutional framework within which urban forestry and stormwater are managed in South Australia is complex. The Government is currently working toward integrating all acts related to water into a single piece of legislation. At a legislative level, trees are mentioned in forty different Acts of Parliament or their attendant regulations. These include, but are not limited to: • The Sewerage Act of 1929 • The Waterworks Act of 1932 • Water Conservation Act of 1936, and various drainage acts The principal acts governing urban forestry are: • The Crown Land Management Act of 2009 • The Residential Parks Act of 2007 • The Native Vegetation Act of 1991 • The Environment Protection Act of 1993 • The Natural Resources Management Act of 2004b • The Development Act of 1993 and the Development Regulations of 2008 Except in the case of designated National Parks (which fall within the jurisdiction of the Department of Environ- ment and Heritage) and on private lands, management and development of the urban forest falls within the jurisdic- tion of Local Government Authorities, of which nineteen separate authorities constitute the City and its suburban environs. Three other rural councils have jurisdiction over much of the watershed and drainage in the hills to the east. The institutional settings in respect to water management and ownership are of critical importance since these will have a direct bearing on the future of Adelaide’s urban forest. The kernel of the dilemma surrounding the better use and man- agement of South Australia’s stormwater for its urban forest is property rights. The Natural Resources Management Act of 2004 vests ownership of the resource in the State Govern- ment; each and every right of any individual to take water within the State falls within the jurisdiction of the Govern- ment (sec. 124). All rights at common law—that is, those rights that have been previously adopted into the law through usage, custom, and judicial precedent—are abolished (sec. 124.8). Administrative arrangements are further complicated since they effectively involve three tiers of government. The Water Act Brindal and Stringer: Water Scarcity and Urban Forests of 2007 and the National Water Commission Act of 2004, of the Commonwealth of Australia, confer shared jurisdiction on the Federal Government. The Government only asserts its rights over water or stormwater in stressed areas. At the present time, Adelaide and most of its suburban areas are not ‘prescribed.’ Prescription is the method by which the government formally asserts its ownership claim, thereby establishing its jurisdiction. Because government ownership rights can be asserted at any time, local governments seeking to harvest storm- water, or to utilize it in the watering of its urban forest, cannot operate with certainty, since they are utilizing a resource that is not theirs to claim. This ownership uncer- tainty acts as an impediment to the speedy evolution of the best management practices for the city’s urban forest. The debate about what constitutes ‘best practice’ in water resource management continues to be hampered by favoring a technical conceptualization of water. In line with this view, water resources management is seen as con- trolling and governing direct water use and related waste flows, not as managing water’s various functions in the landscape (Falkenmark 2003). One key stormwater func- tion is its role in maintaining the health of urban forests. Evidence suggests stormwater run-off from impervious surfaces can contribute to the collapse of healthy freshwater ecosystems in urban environments (Ladson et al. 2006; Roy et. al. 2008). In the Australian context, research emphasizes an ad hoc approach to stormwater management characterized by partial remedies overly focused on engineering solutions and a lack economic analysis and attempts to integrate poli- cies (Tisdell and Ward 2003; Grafton and Ward 2008; Ward et al. 2008). A recent study focusing specifically on evidence from the United States and Australia identifies seven ma- jor impediments to sustainable urban stormwater manage- ment (Roy et. al. 2008): 1) uncertainties in performance and cost, 2) insufficient engineering standards and guidelines, 3) fragmented responsibilities, 4) lack of institutional capac- ity, 5) lack of legislative mandate, 6) lack of funding and effective market incentives, and 7) resistance to change. In South Australia, the fragmented responsibilities impedi- ment is a significant concern as water is not treated as a single resource with multiple functions, nor are the watersheds con- sidered on a system-wide scale. Water is compartmentalized into three discrete business units: potable water supplies, sew- erage water disposal, and stormwater disposal. Unlike many cities where effluent and stormwater disposal are served by common infrastructure, in South Australia, both infrastructures Figure 1. Natural arrangements for water governance (2010). Diagram courtesy of the National Water Commission Archive. ©2013 International Society of Arboriculture
May 2013
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