Our role as a regulator

We are responsible for Queensland’s water management laws and regulate activities under the:

Under these laws, the department has regulatory responsibilities across various areas and functions.

To deliver our regulatory functions under legislation, we undertake a range of activities, including:

Promote and reinforce good regulatory practices, including promoting the benefits of compliance.
Monitor and assess potential impacts of certain activities to determine if those impacts are acceptable.
Monitor and assess the take of water from the state’s water resources to ensure they are sustainable now and into the future.
Provide information, resources and tools to the regulated community to be clear about their obligations.
Conduct site visits, meetings, workshops and events.
Ensure drinking water supplies are safe and secure to protect human health and the environment.
Ensure dam owners have effective dam safety management programs in place to minimise the risk of dam failure and protect life and property.
Provide quality-assured water monitoring data and technical advice into the water planning process to ensure environmental and water resource outcomes are achieved.
Hold alleged offenders to account, to be the effective, strong, consistent and evidence-based regulator Queenslanders expect.

Where compliance is not achieved, we take a risk-based approach to decide how best to respond, which includes taking enforcement action when needed.

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.

What we regulate and how

Sustainable water management

Protect water resources, users and ecosystems by:

monitoring water take to ensure that it is accurate and authorised
keeping the natural function and availability of water by ensuring that capture of water or
interference with natural flow paths is authorised
ensuring sustainable allocation and extraction of riverine quarry materials
regulating activities undertaken within watercourses
overseeing the bore drilling industry to make sure drillers are appropriately licensed and
qualified to protect the aquifer and maintain the quality and availability of groundwater supply
ensuring water security and reliability of drinking water supply.

Public health

Regulatory oversight of water service providers such as local governments and other bodies. Our regulations make sure these operators provide high quality drinking water that is safe and meets water security needs

Safety

Making sure referable dams across the state are built to the required engineering standards and maintained by the dam owners. This includes ensuring that they are resilient to climate change and extreme weather.

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Last updated: 06 Jan 2025