Ensure every community across Queensland has safe and secure water, alongside support for boosting resilience and contingency plans even in times of severe drought or floods.
- Ensuring no-one runs out of water in at-risk communities and planning for resilience even during times of drought or other natural disasters.
- Planning for future water security alongside urban communities and councils including promoting water demand and household waterwise practices.
- Engaging community and industry Waterwise initiatives to drive behaviour change and sustainable water use.
- Easing cost of living pressure with rebates, incentives, subsidies and grants for local government infrastructure.
- Improving dam safety to make sure they’re well regulated, safe and secure against climate change and extreme weather.
- Delivering the Urban Water Explorer web platform to present data from water and sewerage service providers. This will allow them to monitor water security, demand management, infrastructure and maintenance.
- Using climate science and modelling to understand climate change effects on our water resources and to tailor our response.
Initiatives
These initiatives are underway between October 2023 and December 2024.
Our initiatives:
- Deliver the Urban water risk assessment to identify drinking water supply and wastewater service risks in regional and remote communities.
- Support at-risk towns with water security advice, including climate change resilience.
- Deliver a refreshed waterwise education program.
Initiative in partnership with the Australian Government:
- Partner with the Australian Government to deliver urban water funding projects
Initiative in partnership with Department of State Development, Infrastructure, Local Government and Planning and the Australian Government:
- Continue to work with local government proponents to bring forward proposals for National Water Grid Funds (NWGF) for essential infrastructure to improve water security in regional and remote First Nations communities.
Initiative in partnership with Seqwater:
- Progress water security infrastructure
Initiative in partnership with Queensland water Directorate and Local Government Association of Queensland:
- Deliver Queensland Water Regional Alliance Program (QWRAP) to drive regional collaboration across nine regions to support water and sewerage services delivery
- analyse workforce skills gap to better understand regional training needs so staff can deliver water and sewerage services to communities
- create workforce development opportunities through the Water Industry Worker (WIW), which provides coordinated and targeted training for water network and field staff or labourers
- procure contractors at a regional level to provide economies of scale and scope and greater regional purchasing power
- encourage ideas and tailored initiatives to address common regional water and sewerage issues through the annual meeting of the nine QWRAP chairs and coordinators
- continue support of the statutory Key Performance Indicator Data Collection and data publication via the Queensland Urban Water Explorer online dashboard, which enables evidence-based decision making to continue improving service delivery.
Initiative in partnership with Department of State Development, Infrastructure, Local Government and Planning, Department of Environment and Science, Queensland Health and First Nations Councils:
- Deliver improved water and wastewater services
- support capacity of operator staff through Queensland Indigenous Councils Water Operators Network (QICWON)
- leverage DSDILGP’s Indigenous sustainability assessment to help inform DRDMW’s Urban Water Risk Assessment, particularly in First Nations communities.
More information
- How we plan and manage our water resources.
- How we support water supply security for our urban communities.
- Learn about water markets and trading in Queensland.
Last updated: 17 May 2024