2017-09-18 General Committee Agenda

GENERAL COMMITTEE MEETING AGENDA                                               18 SEPTEMBER 2017


The following Sections 1-5 of this report provide a background of the States proposed changes to
water quality objectives and what they mean for Noosa Catchment waters. Section 6 is the
feedback proposed to be provided to the State in response to the proposed changes.

1.    Regulatory Protection of Queensland Water Quality
The Queensland government regulates human impacts to waterway ecological processes via the
Queensland Environmental Protection Act (The Act). The objective of the Act, and its subordinate
Environmental Protection (Water) Policy (The Policy) is to:
Protect Queensland’s environment (including its waterways) while allowing for development that
improves the total quality of life, both now and in the future, in a way that maintains the ecological
processes on which life depends (ecologically sustainable development).
To achieve this objective, The Policy sets the water quality objectives criteria believed necessary
to maintain the ecological processes in different types of Queensland waters. The criteria are
unique to different water types. For example the black tea coloured waters within the Noosa
catchment, referred to as wallum waters, have different water quality objectives criteria because
they support different flora and fauna compared to the creeks in non wallum areas. The different
water types currently mapped throughout Noosa River Catchment are shown on Attachment 1.
The Existing Water Quality Objectives for each of the water types in the Noosa River Catchment
are contained in the document located at this link:
https://www.ehp.qld.gov.au/water/policy/pdf/documents/noosa-river-ev-2010.pdf
The water quality objectives criteria has legislative power, including, but not limited to:
    Informing conditions of development and activity approvals issued under the Environmental
      Protection Act (i.e. including, but not limited to releases from sewerage treatment plants,
      landfills, quarries, dredging activities, poultry farms etc).
    Informing investigations to determine whether environmental harm has occurred and who is
      responsible for clean up.
    Determining whether or not a proposed activity that will release water has potential to
      cause Environmental Harm.
    Identifying when upstream environmental offsets (i.e. management for improvement of
      water quality) are necessary or will enable water quality objectives to be achieved at the
      location of a point source input (i.e. sewerage treatment plant outfalls).
Enforcement and/or investments to manage declining water quality is not a legal obligation
unless the Water Quality Objective criteria are breached. Therefore, if the water quality objectives
criteria are too lenient for the ecological process, ecological stress could begin prior to
enforcement or investment investigations commence. Likewise, where the water quality
objectives are unnecessarily restrictive for the ecological needs of the environment, they become
recognised as unreasonable, where the environment is not visually affected. In these situations,
they tend to be not enforced. It is therefore important to ensure the water quality objectives are
representative of the environments needs, i.e. not too easy to meet, such that non-visual
environmental degradation occurs and is not required to be investigated prior to legal breach of
the criteria, or unreasonably restrictive such that the water quality objectives can never be met.
Water Quality Objectives that accurately reflect the ecological process needs of the environment
ensure that time and money is invested in the waters appropriately to prevent environmental
harm, and give an accurate trigger when the environment is under stress, rather than investing in
unnecessary ineffective bandaid or bells and whistles solutions for minimal benefit.




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