Council to oppose weakening of water quality protections

Council has written to the State Government opposing proposed changes to Queensland’s legislated Water Quality Objectives.

Water Quality Objectives are targets agreed to by stakeholders. They’re intended to enhance and protect the environmental values of waterways and they’re used as indicators of management performance.

Councillor Brian Stockwell said the State’s bid to set new Water Quality Objectives based on water quality data from only the past 10 years would see existing protections diminished.

He said the changes would pave the way for some consistently poorly rated waterways in disturbed catchments to be reclassified as healthy, without any actual improvement to water quality.

“Essentially, the State is proposing to relax sediment and other nutrient level objectives to bump up water quality scores, when it should be implementing changes that genuinely meet the environment’s needs,” Cr Stockwell said.

Council has raised these and other concerns in its submission to the State.

“As custodian of one of the healthiest waterways in South East Queensland, we feel the State should be focusing its efforts on meeting the needs of the natural environment, rather than paving the way for the water quality in stressed environments to be considered acceptable, ” Cr Stockwell added.

5 October 2017