Everything about The Ross River Dam totally explained
The
Ross River Dam is located at the end of Riverway Drive in the city of
Townsville,
Australia, and is the is the major water supply for the region. It was constructed by
Leighton Holdings in 1971 for the purposes of flood mitigation and water storage. The dam has a capacity of 250 000 megalitres (after the spillway upgrade) and an earth rock embankment 8.35 kilometres in length and 27 metres in height (the longest in the southern hemisphere) and occupies a catchment area of 750km
2 with a concrete spillway. When the dam spills over it flows into the
Ross River, Visitors can view the dam from a viewing platform at Ross park.
The Ross Dam Pump Station supplies up to 232 megalitres of water to the Douglas Water Treatment Plant, where the water undergoes aeration, sedimentation, rapid sand filtration and chlorination treatment before being pumped to the Reservoir where the water is distributed to Townsville.
At the base of the dam and on the banks of the Ross river is Ross Park (part of
Riverway) with facilities for picnics or
barbecues, as well as public toilets at this location.
The Upgrade
- 2001 - a panel of experts in dam safety and construction undertook an investigation of the dam. Over two years, the panel conducted studies of the dam's construction with the world standards.
2003 - The report confirmed that upgrades were required and by late 2003 The first stage of lowering the spillway by 3.5 metres was underway, the lowering of the existing spillway has been done so the installing of dam gates to control the flow downstream and water storage levels can begin.
2004 - A combined GHD-MWH team was appointed to design the remaining work and manage the project.
2005 - John Holland and Macmahon are awarded the construction contract.
2006 - Construction commenced with Constructing sand filters and supporting earthfill, extra rockwork to the dam embankment and the contraction of the gates.
2007 - Project completed late 2007.
The Spillway gates have increased the dam's capacity by around nine percent, which is about 21 000 megalitres or four months extra supply of water.
Three spillway gates span the 40 metre wide spillway.
The Upgrade was going to take until mid 2008 to complete unless rainfall delays construction, however it was completed ahead of time in late 2007.
The cost was around $115 million.
The dam's storage was temporarily reduced with the lowering of the spillway to make way for the new floodgates that have now been fitted.
Backup water can be supplied by pumping water from the Burdekin Dam if needed.
Further Information
Get more info on 'Ross River Dam'.
|
External Link Exchanges
Do you know how hard it is to get a link from a large encyclopaedia? Well we're different and will prove it. To get a link from us just add the following HTML to your site on a relevant page:
<a href="http://ross_river_dam.totallyexplained.com">Ross River Dam Totally Explained</a>
Then simply click through this link from your web page. Our crawlers will verify your link, extract the title of your web page and instantly add a link back to it. If you like you can remove the words Totally Explained and embed the link in article text.
As long as your link remains in place, we'll keep our link to you right here. Please play fair - our crawlers are watching. Your site must be closely related to this one's topic. Any kind of spamming, dubious practises or removing the link will result in your link from us being dropped and, potentially, your whole site being banned. |
