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.