South East Queensland

The Gold Coast, Logan Basin and Moreton water resource plans (WRPs) require that water be managed for general and ecological purposes. This includes social and cultural benefits. 

There are no formal entitlements held for environmental, social or cultural purposes in the Gold Coast, Logan Basin or Moreton WRP areas. Surface water stores are managed through a rules-based system outlined in the WRPs and resource operation plans (ROPs).

Social, cultural and economic benefit

In Queensland, entitlements and allocations do not have intended use as an attribute, and all metered abstractions do not have entitlement priority or use as attributes. Water held for cultural, social or economic purposes can not be differentiated explicitly.

Urban abstractions have been differentiated in the following line items, and around 42 GL has been identified as being used for commercial, industrial and municipal use:

• 14.6.2 Diversion of unregulated flows - urban water access entitlement
• 14.6.5.4 Diversion of unregulated flows – urban holder
• 14.7.2.4 Allocation diversion of regulated flows – high security, urban holder.
  

Environmental benefits

Environmental flow objectives are listed in the Gold Coast WRP (2006), Logan Basin WRP (2007) and Moreton WRP (2007). Environmental flow objectives are assessed through flow data collected at the target sites or nodes on various watercourses. Further information on the environmental flow objectives, including specific high, medium and low flow volumes for nodes, are detailed in the various Schedule of the Moreton, Logan Basin and Gold Coast WRPs.

Water allocation security objective differ between regions and are outlined within their respective WRPs.

Performance indicators for water allocation security objectives are:

• for taking supplemented water – monthly supplemented water sharing index
  
• for taking unsupplemented water for water allocations various classes have different sharing indices depending on the WRP.

Rule based top-up environmental flow releases

In the Lower Lockyer water supply scheme (WSS), Seqwater, as the interim resource operations licence (IROL) holder released a total of 845 ML for top-up environmental purposes from Brightview and O’Reilly weirs. These releases were required to supplement natural streamflow at various times throughout the reporting period. At all other times, natural streamflow satisfied the environmental flow requirements.