page_title: Brisbane River
section_title: Environmental concerns
hierarchical_section_title: Brisbane River / Environmental concerns
caption_attribution_description: English: Brisbane skyline from Howard Smith Wharves
context_page_description: The Brisbane River is the longest river in South-East Queensland, Australia, and flows through the city of Brisbane, before emptying into Moreton Bay on the Coral Sea. John Oxley, the first European to explore the river, named it after the Governor of New South Wales, Sir Thomas Brisbane in 1823. The penal colony of Moreton Bay later adopted the same name, eventually becoming the present city of Brisbane. The river is a tidal estuary and the water is brackish from its mouth through the majority of the Brisbane metropolitan area westward to the Mount Crosby Weir. The river is wide and navigable throughout the Brisbane metropolitan area.
  The river travels 344 km from Mount Stanley. The river is dammed by the Wivenhoe Dam, forming Lake Wivenhoe, the main water supply for Brisbane. The waterway is a habitat for the rare Queensland lungfish, Brisbane River cod, and bull sharks. The largest ship built on the river was the Robert Miller. The 66,000 tonne vessel became un-moored in the 1974 Brisbane flood. While not the highest experienced along the river since European settlement, this flood was the most damaging. Major floods also occurred in January 2011 and multiple times during 1893.
context_section_description: During the 19th century and early 20th century, the river's surface was periodically choked by large swathes of the noxious weed known as water hyacinth. The plant was originally imported from South America.
  Environmentally, the river is in a poor condition and has been so for many years. In 2000, the Brisbane River estuary did not meet the national guidelines for environmental standards. The lower reaches received a very poor rating in the 2008 Healthy Waterways report, an annual assessment of river water quality. The major causes of pollution are excess nutrients, hydrocarbons, pesticides and bacteria which become concentrated in the river and its sediment after flowing off surrounding lands. The river is also considered too murky and it is not recommended to swim in its waters.
  Beginning in the 1950s, the river was dredged for the purpose of extracting sand and gravel. The considerable impacts of that activity include increased turbidity and bank erosion. The effect of the artificial sediment load in Moreton Bay grew to concern environmentalists worried that sediment was choking sea grass paddocks which were grazing territory for dugong. Public outcry led to all commercial dredging being stopped by 1998.
   Non-extractive dredging continues in the Brisbane River in order to maintain its navigability.
  In 2018, the water quality in the Brisbane River failed to meet many Queensland Government standards. Nitrogen and phosphorus exceeded the maximum levels in all tests conducted in the mid-Brisbane River catchment. Results in the lower- and upper- catchments found maximum levels exceeded for the majority of tests for nitrogen and nearly all tests for phosphorus. Nitrogen and phosphorus primarily enter the river as they are washed in from agriculture areas on the banks upstream.
  In 2019, research at the University of Queensland indicated that the river’s turbidity cycle (and murky brown colour) is principally driven by exchanges of mud between the channel and mudbanks. However, by planting Crinum pedunculatum in a line parallel to the channel and below the mean water level, the turbidity would reduce to such a degree that the river would appear clear and blue.
caption: Brisbane River from Howard Smith Wharves
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