Brisbane’s waterways have been given a better than expected health rating despite the destruction of the January floods.

The good news came in the annual report card today providing information on Queensland’s waterways.

Vivien Von Drehnen reports.

TRANSCRIPT

After an intensive 12 month Ecosystem Health Monitoring Program, Brisbane’s waterways and Moreton Bay were graded on an A to F scale.

The freshwater regions improved in many cases due to heavy rainfall throughout the year leading up to the floods.

Professor Paul Greenfield, Scientific Expert Panel: “So those rivers were actually in pretty good shape, they’d been flushed, there were a lot of species that had actually, were found there that you won’t normally find if they dry out, so the fresh water parts actually did quite well over the year.”

The Queensland Government says the result is a bit of a surprise.

Vicky Darling, Qld Environment Minister: “The actions we’ve taken to keep our waterways as clear as possible are just the beginning, we need to keep going, but I’m actually relieved that the report card is not as bad as anticipated.”

The report wasn’t so good for Moreton Bay, which has been downgraded from a C to a C-minus.

Professor Paul Greenfield, Scientific Expert Panel: “I would suspect that we would see a slow recovery in the bay, what we have in the bay now is that the water quality in some measures has improved, but we have a lot more mud in the bay, the area of mud has approximately doubled from fifty square metres to one hundred square metres.”

But the wet season’s started all over again, yesterday North Queensland had it’s wettest day in 47 years

And the heavy rainfall is set to continue up North through to the weekend.

Vivien von Drehnen, QUT News.