The Beattie government got rattled by the water crisis. The government had already weathered the doctor shortage (and embarrassment about some surgeons with below-par success rates) but managed to avoid too much blame for alleged shortcomings in electricity infrastructure, primarily caused by a rapid rise in air-conditioning demand (AJPH, 2004+). But unlike these two issues, every member of the public knew about the water crisis, for the remarkably obvious reason that we were not getting much rain and, in particular, were not getting the ‘deluge rains’ which, every few summers, used to augment the Wivenhoe and Somerset dams and freshen up their gardens. Suburban streets the length and breadth of Australia’s ‘fastest-growing urban region’, as the Beattie government was wont to boast, rang out with neighbourly exhortations for rain. Nature strips, once watered, were now brown, and so were the lawns. Hardy shrubs gave up. Nurseries closed, car-washes flourished (now they have to use recycled water), swimming-pool builders grumbled and landscape gardeners struggled to make ends meet.

Successive senior bureaucrats, government ministers and their advisors ignored the warning signs, sounded as early as l997 by experts in the Department for Natural Resources and Mines, which in various guises had the biggest group of hydrologists and others responsible for assessing water resources and calibrating those resources with consumption patterns and evaporation. The failure to follow this advice reflects badly on senior government bureaucrats and equally badly on ministers who encouraged a culture of ‘see no problems, speak no problems’ (Interviews 2007–08).

The Department of Natural Resources released a draft strategy for water supply in SEQ in August 2004 and a much more alarmist, but well-argued, Interim Report in November 2005, which included the — at that time — amazing proposition that consumption might have to be limited to 300 litres per person per day. As the Executive Summary put it: ‘If significant inflows to the Wivenhoe, Somerset and North Pine are not received by around February 2006, SEQ will be in the grip of the worst drought in recorded history.’ The report pointed out that these dams were last full in February 2001 and had only minimum inflow in 2004. By November 2005 the dams were under 35 per cent full. The report’s main recommendations included: water restrictions, recycled water for industry and power stations (to reduce demand on Somerset and Wivenhoe), construction of a weir on the Mary River, and the investigation of ‘regional desalination facilities’ (SEQRWWS Interim Report, November 2005: 1).

In the following months, dam levels continued to fall precipitously. Generous state government and local council tank subsidies were introduced, enabling householders who installed more than 5000-litre capacity to recoup up to $2200. The Beattie Government ran full-page newspaper advertisements exhorting residents to install tanks and take advantage of a subsidised scheme to install water-wise devices. Tens of thousands of households took up the offer. All new government, commercial and residential structures were encouraged to collect rainwater on site. Level 2 water restrictions, which had been introduced in October 2005, were made more stringent, with Level 3 introduced in June 2006 (hoses banned) and Level 4 in November 2006, allowing bucket-watering for just a few hours a week. Greywater recycling for gardening purposes became legal under BCC regulations in late 2006. Brisbane, a dusty city, especially in dry winters, became dustier still as the brave new world of freeway tunnelling projects, proclaimed by Lord Mayor Campbell Newman, with the implicit backing of the State Government, created huge piles of shale and dirt. Cynics wondered out loud who would tunnel for cars at a time when the very supply of adequate water for the metropolis hung in the balance (Pretty 2006; Dixon 2005).