The wetland at Kensington Wama/Kensington Gardens Reserve, completed in 2022, is the centrepiece of the Burnside Councils $7.4 million revitalisation project of the park, transforming Beckes Lake from an artificial pond to a catchment-wide asset that improves stormwater runoff across the Wattle Park area.
A vegetated water body (macrophyte zone) removes pollutants and cycles nutrients via biological processes, and allows deposition of finer particles via physical trapping around plant roots and in biofilms.
It is expected that the wetland’s water regime will mimic that of natural wetland systems on the Adelaide Plains. Water levels will fluctuate over different time periods, rising after rainfall-driven inflows and dropping over the periods between inflows. This variation will allow native vegetation adapted to this regime to flourish and for effective water treatment due to cycling between aerobic and anaerobic processes in the sediments. An extended detention zone allows water to rise 200mm above the normal water level during periods of higher inflows, where it can be detained for several days, mitigating downstream flood impacts and allowing time for sediments to settle and wetland plants and microbes to treat the water before it flows to Stonyfell Creek. The design of the wetland allows for a future aquifer storage and recovery scheme.
Stonyfell Creek, adjacent to the wetland, was also rehabilitated as part of the project with exotic woody weeds removed and replaced by native species. More than 10,000 plants were reintroduced to the site. They are being watered with harvested stormwater from the Eastern Regional Alliance (ERA) Scheme during establishment, although it is not expected that they will require irrigation in the long-term due to the selection of local provenance plants that would have originally existed in the local area.
Second Creek and Karrawirra Pari are the direct beneficiaries of this stormwater treatment system, with significantly cleaner urban water flowing downstream from Stonyfell Creek into these watercourses, helping to restore the natural balance and ecosystems of riparian corridors across the Adelaide Plains.
More information and images are available on our Kensington Wama/Kensington Gardens Reserve wetlands WSUD Projects page.
