State environment protection policies (SEPPs) help to address water quality requirements across Victoria by setting out the beneficial uses of water and the environmental quality indicators and objectives to protect them.  SEPPs are established under the Environment Protection Act 1970 as a legal framework to protect and improve Victoria’s water environments, as well as the social and economic values they support

DELWP engaged Alluvium to  develop a SEPP Monitoring,  Evaluation and Reporting Framework to support the development and implementation of the revised SEPP (Waters) document.

Our work involved the development of a SEPP (Waters) Program Logic and consideration of indicators and monitoring methods that allow for evaluation of both behavioural and ecological changes over time.  The work need to align with  monitoring and/or reporting strategies for other relevant projects across the key partner agencies including,  consideration of State of the Bay reporting, Port Phillip Bay EMP, the new Marine and Coastal Act, and the Government’s Water for Victoria discussion paper.

We provided an overview of the types of success criteria, indicators (quantitative and qualitative), collection methods, evaluation processes and reporting that are needed to achieve the program logic goals and objectives.  We also included discussion of key learnings from development and implementation of other nominated MER plans and strategies, and their ability to measure the effectiveness of programs.