Talk:Warragamba Dam

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There seems to be some conjecture over the available storage figure. 1,857,000 ML was the old figure BEFORE the deep-water storage recovery project. As a direct result of that project, the Sydney Catchment Authority now uses 2,027,000ML - as of 15 April 2006. Furthermore, official figures are quoted in megalitres, not cubic km. Any questions/thoughts please let me know. Cheers.--Merbabu 06:12, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

• PS, with the extra info in the article (which i will add to and firm up as time permits) we might want to put in a few sub-headings. I'll get around to it as time permits - unless i am beaten to it. --Merbabu 06:14, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

It is interesting to note that in the press they are talking about the extra capacity being avaialable "each year". That is not correct because by the time the water is needed it will be unlikely the dam will refill before the next year. So whilst it increases the capacity of the dam, increasing the capacity of the dam will not lead the catchment to yield any more water during the existing dry conditions.

Problems when dams used for flood mitigation reach capacity, are common to all dams used for that purpose. Maybe the comments

Its limitations, however, become apparent when the reservoir reaches capacity and water must be released through the floodgates.

could be reviewed? Prudent use of dams for flood mitigation includes, planned release of excess water prior to a flood wave reaching the dam wall. Sometimes this leads to minor flooding, in an attempt to avoid catastrophic flooding (minor floods are still catestrophic to you if it is your house under water though!) Once the flood wave reaches the dam wall, water is not released through the floodgates - it overflows via the spillways. Garrie 02:25, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

Hmmm - in the case of Warragamba, water from a moderate flood is released through the opened gates first on the primary spillway (ie, middle of dam wall). ONly an extreme (1 in 700 year??) flood is the auxillary spillway likely to see use. Merbabu 02:33, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

I would hope that events under 1:100 years don't actually need the spillway. So that is exactly what I was getting at.Garrie 00:14, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] References

Could the reference to internal sydney water operational figures be replaced with something which is available to the public?Garrie 00:14, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

The reference was added by Merbabu on 24 May 2006, but it's not a reference to anything in the article, i.e. it's redundant.I've removed it. SimonJones 13:30, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

As a local resident i can clear up a few things (although nothing we can actually put in the article without another source). the spillway is designed for a 1 in 10,000 year flood, and it is designed like a giant plug so that more layers wash away depending on how severe the flooding is. secondly in a normal flooding incident the primary floodgate opens. only in the event that the primary gate cant cope with the load are the 4 auxillary gates opened.. hope this helps clear some things up. we got brochures on the topic a while back but ill try to dig up a few links. Raya 85 13:14, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Merge proposal

I propose we merge this with Lake Burragorang, as they are pretty much one and the same and most of the information is duplicated.

Any views? John Wormell (talk) 08:20, 2 June 2008 (UTC)