Last Friday's heavy rainfall caused Lake Tuggeranong's floating wetlands to dislodge, prompting program managers to begin plans for changing locations.
In March 2021, floating wetlands were installed in the north of Lake Tuggeranong at one of the inlets to the lake in Greenway, in an effort to clear up the blue-green algae.
The wetlands make up more than 500 square metres and have been dislodged from the anchoring since rain from last Friday.
According to program manager of ACT Healthy Waterways Dr Ralph Ogdento, while there has been damage, the plants "are pretty solid."
"We're getting a crew out to look at them over the next few days and from our initial assessment, everything's still there. It's just a bit of a jumble that we need to sort out," Dr Ogdento said.
"The idea was to target the bay right where Village Creek cut out because we were afraid given the levels of nutrients we're seeing coming out of that gross pollutant trap, that the bay would see blue green algae blooms so we put in the floating wetlands to compete."
"Now, unfortunately, in that bay is a super high energy environment, particularly when the gross pollutant track gets filled the way it did in that storm a few nights ago, so it looks like we probably can't put the full wetland in that bay."
While it is likely the wetlands have to be moved to a different part of the lake, Dr Ogdento remains optimistic it will still serve its purpose as "it's a trial where you learn."
"It's very hard to predict the hydraulic environment and the energy of the water in that area and we under predicted the energy going through that channel and so we're just going to have to move them out where the energies have a chance to dissipate a bit in the light."
"But it will still be up at the Village Creek and Kambah Creek arm where a lot of polluted water comes in, so they'll still be doing a job of cleaning up the water."
The project is already having action put in place to revive the wetlands, which will take a number of weeks to be completed.
"After the initial assessment we'll have a plan over the next week and implement that over the next month," Dr Ogdento said.
"In the meantime, it will be safely up against the bank which we've done before from a previous storm about three months ago."
"We'll know what to do a little better because the anchors of the wetlands are still there, so we'll just move the anchor now and whatever the new spot is away we'll go."
