Catchment values

It is truly a catchment of national significance. The catchment:

• Stretches 22,000 square kilometres (2.2 million hectares) from south of Goulburn to near Cessnock, west from Lithgow to Palm Beach on the coast and north to the Putty Valley.
• Feeds a river system which flows 470 kilometres from near Lake Bathurst to Broken Bay.
• Includes major rivers such as the Hawkesbury, Nepean, Wollondilly, Mulwaree, Tarlo, Wingecarribee, Nattai, Nepean, Coxs, Kowmung, Grose, Capertee, Colo and Macdonald.
• Provides the majority of the drinking water for over 4 million people living in Sydney, the Illawarra, the Blue Mountains, the Southern Highlands, Lithgow Valley and the Central Coast (70% of New South Wales population).
• Supports a regional population of 1 million people which is expected to grow to 1.3 million by 2019.
• Home to 15.6% of New South Wales Aboriginal population.
• Generates over $1 billion each year in agriculture and horticulture (12% of all NSW's agriculture production). This includes $600 million of irrigated agriculture which provides much of Sydney's fresh vegetables, flowers and fruit.
• Supports over $6 million a year in commercial seafood industries (including the state's second largest estuarine trawl industry for prawns and squid).
• Is enjoyed by 43,000 recreational fishers.
• Supplies 80% of the sand and gravel used in Sydney's construction industry worth an estimated $100 million a year.
• Generates over $60 million annually in tourism and recreation from more than 10 million visitors to the catchment each year.
• Provides 23% of NSW's electricity using water from the Coxs River in the Wallerwang and Lower Portland power stations.
• Protects 50% of the catchment in over 1 million hectares of National Parks and reserves.
• Boasts the Greater Blue Mountains World Heritage Area that includes the 13% of the worlds Eucalypt species and almost 10% of Australia's vascular plant species.
• Protects 288 threatened species (28% of all New South Wales' threatened species) as well as 33 endangered ecological communities
• Supports 22 species of frogs, 17 species of snakes, 42 species of lizards, 1 species of turtle, 2 species of monotremes, 30 species of marsupials, 21 species of bats, 6 species of native rodents, the dingo