Googong goes over

The water supply for Canberra (and Queanbeyan) comes from a number of dams, of which by far the biggest is Googong to the South of Queanbeyan.  It is unfortunately the hardest to top up since it isn't really in a mountainous area and much of the surrounding countryside is rural residential with dams on the feeder creeks.  As a result it got down to about 30% capacity in 2008 and despite getting some water from the other dams was still about 40% a year ago.  The following chart from ACTEW shows the change in the last 12 months.
It was the last of the dams to hit 100% which it managed on Saturday,  It is now going over the spillway and there follow some images I took this morning (Monday6 November).


 The dam spills into the Queanbeyan River which has settled down a bit since Friday, but with that lot spilling into it has still got a bit of flow happening.  However the next two images probably explain why the causeway in Morrisett St went under on Friday.

What is still running out is going into the Molonglo and thence to the Murrumbidgee.  So, after a few hundred river miles this lot will end up in Wagga, where they really don't need any more water.  I wish the residents of that town good luck, especially with another 50 - 80mm of rain forecast for later in the week.

I have put some further information about what happened later in the week at this post.

Comments

Denis Wilson said…
Hi Martin
Good and bad news, eh?
Hopefully the ACT Powers-That-Be rethink the expensive pipe from Angle Crossing on the Murrumbidgee.
.
They would not need it anyway if they simply mandated garden watering only from domestic roof-top collection of storm water (rain tanks).
.
Simple and much cheaper than large pipes, and uphill pumping. Free tanks to Canberra houses, not required to be "plumbed in". Small pumps only.
.
Only requires political courage.
.
Sorry - maybe that's too hard.
Denis
7 December 2010 at 01:15:00 GMT+11
Flabmeister said…
Denis
It would indeed be nice if that pipeline was abandoned. However I have never heard of a construction project in (or in this case servicing) the ACT being abandoned. The employment of building workers is the most sacred policy in the Region.

ACTEW has very considerable influence and would not wish to give up this hard fought project!

The final issue is that with the type of McMansion being built in Canberra there isn't room on the minuscule block for a water tank bigger than a milk bottle! While the residents thus don't have a garden to water the indoor jacuzzis use up an equivalent amount of water!
Martin
7 December 2010 at 06:47:00 GMT+11
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Insects from pine trees

Image
This afternoon (13/1/2015) we were looking out of our sunroom and noticed a strange bit of mist.  On getting my binoculars on the case I found it to be a cloud of tens of thousand of insects.  They appeared with naked eye to be flying away, but with binoculars I thought they were circling. Here are some images In the second one it may be possible to see there are two streams coming from the top of each tree. There was a loud buzzing noise but that could just be several thousand wings. Earlier in the day Frances had been to some nearby willows and they were infested with many little black soft bodied insects.  Perhaps they shifted to the pines and were swarming? Help!! Any information welcome. A colleague, from Wamboin, had noticed a similat phenomenon, but involvng eucalypts rather than pines!  Here are the photos he took with his phone. I have consulted some expert friends.   Their responses were: I would have gone for chironomids. I rec...
Read more

A tour of the West (part 1)

Image
A friend from my time in the UN sent me some photos of her family trip along Route 66.  They did this is a large camperwagon rather than a Chevy Corvette (apparently the kids jacked up about being offered a trip in the trunk).  It seems to have been a very good trip for them and most interesting to see their photos.  It was also educational for me, as I found out the German for rocking chair (schaukelstuhl, since you ask). They did 7200 miles in 30 days - a pretty serious bit of distance. This made me think of the trips we did in 1981 when living in Denver.  Frances initiated that idea by getting a book about the National Parks of the West  and marking interesting places.  I then worked out a route on a Rand-McNally Road Atlas (GPS was unknown then  - as were iPhones, personal computers and the internet).  From memory, taking nearly the whole Summer school holidays we covered about 10,000 miles in 70 days.  Here, approximately,  are ...
Read more

Maslins beach rules

Image
Anyone who was in Adelaide in the 1970s will be having a good nudge nudge at that title.  However the beach is really nice even though it is the haunt (in Summer ) of naked people.  (As an aside one of the 'van park staff was talking to some other guests and commented that the sights on the beach in Summer were not at all exciting.)  In April it is the haunt of seniors, many of them exercising their dogs, and thus a far more attractive place. Getting to the beach was a walk of about 1km along roads, from our van.  The second half of this went past a rather daggy looking paddock with many formed ridges in it, as though it was irrigated, although a water sources wasn't evident.  The paddock got interesting towards the end as some green parrots appeared.  Thanks to Frances eye for detail we have subsequently identified these as Elegant Parrots: my first lifer for 2014.    The locale is indicated by the red lines in this mudmap: Here are the bird...
Read more