Research agreement to benefit water resources

A strategic research partnership between The University of Queensland (UQ), Griffith University and SeqWater will provide long-term benefits for South East Queensland's water resources.

The partnership will pave the way for an extensive collaborative research program, which will deliver improved and more cost effective water delivery to South East Queensland.

UQ Vice-Chancellor, Professor Paul Greenfield, said the partnership indicated the importance of finding research-based solutions to secure Queensland's water supplies.

"The University of Queensland and Griffith University are acknowledged research leaders in water and environmental sciences and joined forces recently to form the Australian Water and Environmental Research Alliance," Professor Greenfield said.

"Working together with Seqwater, we have the facilities and expertise to advance research into how we can better manager our precious water resources for future generations.

"The partnership will allow for longer term strategic projects to be undertaken as well as provide Seqwater with the capacity to tackle immediate resource issues as they appear."

Seqwater CEO, Peter Borrows, said the Research Partnership would support and broaden the research expertise available to Seqwater to progress strategic research priorities that would assist the organisation to manage the most open catchments in the country for drinking water supply as well as water treatment infrastructure.

"This Partnership will build on the outcomes from the individual partnership arrangements that Seqwater has had in place with both The University of Queensland and Griffith University since May 2007," Mr Borrows said.

"The key outcomes and achievements from these current partnership arrangements include an improved ability to meet regulatory requirements including environmental obligations; embedding research in a rapid response to lungfish deaths; the management of risks to water quantity and quality, and the development of autonomous sampling technologies.

"For example, the research quantified the impact of changing dam levels, which eliminated the need for costly vegetation removal and saved an estimated $7M, while savings of more than $5M have been achieved in cost effective remedial action from improved land management practises."

Planning for the Strategic Research Partnership began in July 2010 and culminated in a planning workshop earlier this year which comprised approximately 30 participants, including Seqwater and WaterSecure managers, researchers and project sponsors, and key representatives and researchers from The University of Queensland and Griffith University.

The workshop established partner expectations for the Strategic Research Partnership and the strategic research priorities.

Griffith University Vice-Chancellor, Professor Ian O'Connor said: "This Strategic Research Partnership will strengthen our collaboration with Seqwater and enable us to focus on strategic, long-term research goals, with a particular focus on the whole of the water supply chain from managing the catchment and reservoirs, to treating the water."

"We look forward to a long partnership beyond the initial five-year agreement.''