Drinking water threat for Brisbane as city escapes major flooding

BRISBANE has escaped serious flooding, but Premier Campbell Newman says taps could run dry of drinking water overnight if consumption is not cut.

Auchenflower

BRISBANEÂ’s flood crisis has given way to a drinking water emergency, with Premier Campbell Newman warning that taps could run dry in parts of the city overnight if people donÂ’t cut their consumption.

The perverse situation developed, as minor flooding broke out from a swollen Brisbane River, because the city’s main water treatment plant was knocked out by the volume of silt being washed down from catchments in the Lockyer Valley.

Mr Newman warned consumption of water had to fall by nearly half from the usual 450ML a day until the plant could be brought back on line tomorrow or Thursday.

He appealed to Brisbane residents to limit water use to drinking, washing and cooking. An exception would be made for those who needed to hose out flooded-affected areas.

The Brisbane River peaked at 2m at 11am local time (midday AEDT) today, below the predicted level of 2.6m and yesterday morning's peak of 2.3m.

There were no reports of homes with water above the floorboards but Brisbane Lord Mayor Graham Quirk said high tides in coming days would see the river rise again.

The river is expected to peak again tomorrow.

Brisbane Lord Mayor Graham Quirk urged people to revert to the practice, promoted during Brisbane’s last drought, of restricting showers to four minutes.

“We don’t need to panic around this, but we do want common sense,’’ Mr Quirk said.

Mr Newman said the twin-unit water treatment plant at Mt Crosby had to be shut down because it was clogged by a four-fold increase in silt in Brisbane River, caused by the flood that peaked today in the Brisbane CBD about 2.2m, nearly half a metre lower than forecast.

Clearing the muddy river was part of the reason for resuming water releases from Wivenhoe dam, on the back of the flood surge.

If water use was not reduced, Mr Newman said reservoirs on the south-side of the city could run dry overnight. “So this is serious," he warned.

Mr Newman said he was appealing for the community’s help to head off the need for action by the state government.

Mr Quirk said there were no reports as yet of water entering homes or premises in Brisbane, though many properties were affected by the flood peak.

"At this stage anyway, it's good news," Mr Quirk said.

There were several cases of flooding under homes but a full report for the whole city was still pending.

"I don't want anyone to take their foot off the pedal at this stage. Don't become complacent," he said.

The flooding was nothing like what the city saw in January 2011, when 22,000 homes flooded and the infrastructure damage bill was $400 million.

Residents of Torwood St, Auchenflower, west of the CBD, anxiously watched the water level rise outside homes as the flood bubbled up through stormwater drains.

At Black St, in nearby Milton, there was a rush to move cars as the flood surged in.

But residents of Goodna, near Ipswich hard hit when the Bremer River flooded in the disastrous 2011 floods were being allowed back in their homes as water levels receded there.

Emergency services cautioned it was too soon to say whether the crisis was over.

Mr Quirk said the city's river levels would stay high as water continued to flow in from the west.

The Bremer and Brisbane rivers will rise again tomorrow on the high tide, but the peaks are expected to be lower than today as the volume of water cascading down the river system from the Lockyer Valley to the west eases.

State utility SEQWater was expected to resume discharging water into the river from Wivenhoe Dam today to bring it down from a storage capacity of 129 per cent.

These releases would need to be finely calibrated to avert major flooding, as happened in 2011 when dam managers left it too late to bring the dam down and were forced into emergency discharges as the river rose.

Maryanne Rowlands, whose home on Haig Road, Milton, narrowly escaped inundation in 2011, watched the murky floodwaters bubble up from stormwater drains this morning.

Pointing to some gentle bubbling on the surface of the water, Ms Rowlands told The Australian Online: "I gulp when I see that; it's terrifying."

"It's a sinister, sneaky, insidious, dreadful thing."

Ms Rowlands said despite the devastation of the 4.46m January 2011 peak, which killed one and inundated thousands of homes, many locals had not learned the lessons of the city's flood.

"Yesterday we had young people driving their big cars through the floodwaters and causing huge waves to lap up under these houses. Some people are so uncaring."