Queensland summary from water balances
For Queensland, water balances have been prepared for six water management areas, the: Pioneer; Burnett; Condamine-Balonne; Barron; and Georgina-Diamantina, as well the Brisbane water supply area. Water balances have also been prepared for three interjurisdictional areas, the Border Rivers (QLD and NSW), Lake Eyre Basin (QLD, SA, NSW and NT) and Cooper Creek (QLD, SA and NSW).
Key points
- Rainfall conditions were below long term average values in all Queensland priority areas where water balances were undertaken, the worst being the Pioneer (74% of mean) and the Lake Eyre and Cooper Creek interjurisdictional areas (71% and 77% respectively). Streamflows were also well below long term average values in 2004-05.
- The Pioneer experienced a small increase in surface water storage levels over 2004-05, however all other catchments had decreases in the volume in large surface water storages (i.e. >1000ML capacity). For example, the Brisbane water supply area dam storage volumes reduced by 30% over 2004-05. Across the state, major surface water reservoir volumes remained significantly below capacity during 2004-05. As such, a range of urban water restrictions have been implemented since 2004-05 across many areas of the State, including Brisbane and irrigation water allocations were low across most of the State.
- The information contained within the water cycle reports was collated by SKM and QNRW and was based predominantly on data provided by QNRW (November, 2006). The exception to this is the Brisbane water supply area balance, which was collated by SKM, but includes data provided by numerous organisations, including SEQ Water, SunWater, Brisbane Water, numerous local councils and QNRW. The data has various sources, but predominantly came from various water authority and council databases and for some items of the balance; modelling estimates were available from NRW.
- There is generally very limited data that is readily available for groundwater resources (e.g. amount in stock, volumes extracted, interaction with surface water, recharge and evapotranspiration) across Queensland. In some cases (e.g. the Pioneer) there is a detailed groundwater model of the catchment which has enabled some estimates to be made. The overall availability and quality of the available data for groundwater resources is poor and is a major opportunity for improvement in future assessments of Queensland water resources.
- There was also very little data available for Queensland on farm storage, including on-stream or off-stream farm dams / ring tanks that are filled by either local runoff, pumping from a nearby waterway or by flood harvesting. Given that there are few areas in Queensland with distributed water supply to rural areas, it is expected that the volume of water that can potentially be stored on farm would be a large part of the water balance. This is another key data gap that could be improved for future assessments of Queensland’s water resources.
Further discussion of the water balances for Queensland is provided in the Water Availability National Perspective report, and the Regional Water Balances report, which are both available on the
Publications page.
For individual results of water balance assessments go to
Regional Water Resources Assessments
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