Spoke to EA support and they got me to do the following:
1) Close the game (if loaded)..
2) Rename the "Simcity" folder in your documents director to anything else (Eg, SimcityOLD) - "c:\Users\USERNAME\Documents\SimCity\
3) Start the game and re-run the tutorial (can do this from options), speed through until you get back to the water buying part and it should then work!
All up it should only take a few min for all steps above now that we know the work around/solution... Hope it helps others..
Enjoy!