The South East Regional Centre for Urban Landcare (SERCUL) coordinated a clean up of the Bickley Brook Dam in Kenwick, with the City of Gosnells and a Work for the Dole team.
On Wednesday morning a team began cleaning up rubbish, which was brought to their attention by Kenwick couple John and Sally who live a mere hundred metres from the dam.
They said in all the 30 years they have lived there this is the first time the rubbish has been so bad.
Sally said she had never seen it like this before.
“It’s so sad,” she said.
“It’s hideous and disgusting.”
Sally alleges the rubbish is excess waste from the industrial zone.
Some of the rubbish included tyres, plastic bottles, cans, and metals.
Sally said SERCUL had done a fantastic job working on the dam and said it was a beautiful part of Kenwick.
SERCUL chief executive officer Brett Kuhlmann said our rivers can be like roads and all of the water falling within the City of Gosnells flowed to the lowest point, which was the river and possibly passed through local wetlands on the way.
“Think of the roads that you drive on as the creek bed,” he said.
“As the rain falls and the water starts to flow along the roads, everything that is on the road goes down the stormwater drain and flows to the river.
“We live in the Canning River water catchment area and the catchment is 100 per cent dammed.”
Mr Kuhlmann said the Canning River relied on stormwater from the suburbs to maintain flow into the river.
He said the quality of the stormwater had a significant impact on the river.
“You may live a long way from the river but you are connected to it through the large network of roads, car parks and storm water drains,” he said.
“If we can get people thinking about how they are connected to the river, perhaps they will think more about what is going down their local drain.”
