Our role as a regulator
We are responsible for Queensland’s water management laws and regulate activities under the:
- Water Act 2000
- River Improvement Trust Act 1940
- Water Supply (Safety and Reliability) Act 2008
- Planning Act 2016
Under these laws, the department has regulatory responsibilities across various areas and functions.
Our purpose
Our purpose is to ensure Queensland’s water resources are managed responsibly and sustainably. This involves balancing the needs of people, the environment and the economy by regulating water use, protecting water quality and safeguarding water infrastructure. We work to secure a reliable and affordable water supply across Queensland.
What we regulate and how
Sustainable water management
- Monitoring the take of water to ensure that it is authorised and measured accurately.
- Overseeing the bore drilling industry to ensure drillers are appropriately licenced and qualified to maintain the quality and availability of groundwater supply.
- Ensuring water security and a safe, reliable drinking water supply.
- Regulating activities undertaken on land and within watercourses to maintain environmental processes and recognise Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples interests in and connections to water resources e.g.
- Keeping the natural function and availability of water, through ensuring that capture of water or interference with natural flow paths is authorised.
- Ensuring sustainable allocation and extraction of riverine quarry materials.
Public health
Regulatory oversight of water service providers such as local governments and other entities. Our regulations make sure water service providers deliver safe, high-quality drinking water.
Safety
Making sure referable dams across the state are built to the required engineering standards and are maintained by the dam owners. This includes ensuring that they are resilient to climate change and extreme weather.
Our regulatory framework
The Water resource management regulatory strategy (PDF, 969KB) describes our approach for the delivery of our regulatory functions and activities. It includes information on the principles of our regulatory approach, the tools we use, key objectives and activities.
Watch – Our role as a water regulator
Transcript
The department has three broad regulatory functions. We're an environmental regulator, we're a public health regulator, and we're a safety regulator. I'll talk a little bit about our role as an environmental regulator first.
So, the department administers the Water Act 2000 which is the framework that ensures that we have sustainable management of our rivers streams and groundwater systems. That involves monitoring the take of water from rivers and groundwater to ensure that people aren't taking more than they're entitled to.
It also is looking at the extraction of gravel and materials from our rivers so that those are not over extracted and unsustainable. And then we look at overseeing the bore drilling industry for water bores which is making sure that when we're drilling a water bore it's drilled to the appropriate standards and people are getting a high quality product.
When it comes to public safety, our dam safety regulation is around ensuring that the state's 110 or so referable dams, which are water dams, are built to appropriate engineering standards and maintained by the dam owners. There's about 1 million people that live downstream of those dams and if they're not maintained and they're not built to the appropriate standards they can fail in extreme but rare flood events.
Our third area is in drinking water regulation. The department has a role in ensuring that our water service providers, so local councils and the likes, are providing high quality drinking water that's safe to the people of Queensland.
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Contact us
Call 13 QGOV (13 74 68) to find your closest business centre.
Connect with us
Follow us on Facebook and LinkedIn to keep up to date with our events.
More information
- Water resource compliance and enforcement
- How Queensland’s water system works
- Read about the Rural Water Futures program
- Read about the Queensland Murray Darling Basin
Last updated: 12 Feb 2025