WaterNSW acknowledge the traditional custodians of the lands and waters on which we work and pay our respects to all elders past, present and emerging. Skip to a section on the page. Search toggle Home Contact us Alerts and updates Search this site:. Insights Portal Real-time data WaterLive. Status Open to Public. Explore and learn more Show prev thumbnails Booking information. Warragamba Dam 50th anniversary celebrations.
Water operations. Burrendong temperature control curtain Open video. How the gates on Warragamba Dam work Open video. Beneath Lake Burragorang Open video. Warragamba Dam spill - June Open video. It was such a major undertaking that a town was built next to the site to house the dam builders.
A local Gundungurra Aboriginal creation story tells of two dreamtime spirits Mirragan — a large tiger cat, and his quarry Gurangatch — a part fish part reptile who lived in a lagoon where the Wollondilly and Wingecarribee rivers meet. During a long cross-country battle in the Dreaming Gunyungalung , the deep gorges of the Burragorang Valley were gouged out. It was this valley that was flooded when Warragamba Dam was built.
Want to find out how full the dam is this week? Hit the button below! Dam Levels. It was an engineering masterpiece of the mid th Century — and it still takes your breath away today. Take a self-guided walk around the dam grounds and discover the history of this monumental undertaking. Gaze down upon the dam wall and a small part of Lake Burragorang from the deck of the magnificent visitor centre, perched high on a rocky outcrop, or head down to the dam wall on weekends and public holidays ONLY for a close up view of the Lake.
The lake created by the dam stretches back 52 kilometres from the wall. Water flows by gravity through a valve house into two pipelines that feed the raw water to Prospect water filtration plant and via off-takes to smaller filtration plants at Orchard Hills and Warragamba. A local Gundungurra Aboriginal creation story tells of two dreamtime spirits Mirragan - a large tiger cat, and his quarry Gurangatch - a part fish part reptile who lived in a lagoon where the Wollondilly and Wingecarribee rivers meet.
During a long cross-country battle in the Dreaming Gunyungalung , the deep gorges of the Burragorang Valley were gouged out. It was this valley that was flooded when Warragamba Dam was built.
The location of the dam was first suggested in The deep narrow gorge of the Warragamba River, at the exit to Burragorang Valley, was identified as an ideal place for a dam by Polish explorer Count Paul Strzelecki. More than a century and many droughts later, work finally started in to build a reliable new water supply for Sydney's growing population. It took 12 years and 1, workers to build the dam, which opened in It was such a major undertaking that a town was built next to the site to house the dam builders.
The Warragamba River offered two important advantages as a site for a major dam - a large catchment area, and a river flowing through a narrow gorge. A tall and narrow dam capable of holding a vast amount of water could be built. A population boom after World War I followed by the worst drought in recorded history, from to , placed immense pressure on Sydney's water supply. However, despite the first sketch plans for Warragamba Dam being drawn up in , plans were deferred during the construction of the Upper Nepean dams , the Great Depression and World War II Warragamba Dam was a major engineering feat of the mid th Century.
In the Warragamba River was diverted so excavation for the dam could start. Trees were cleared from the Burragorang Valley, and two temporary coffer dams and a tunnel were built to keep the site dry. More than 2.
Concrete was mixed on site using , tonnes of cement and 2. The dam was built in a series of large interlocking concrete blocks. Overhead cableways lifted 18 tonne buckets to place the concrete. Ice was mixed with the concrete to control heat generation and prevent cracks. One of the first pre-stressed concrete towers in Australia was built to house the ice-making plant. To get to the work site from Warragamba township, the dam builders used two suspension bridges, one across Folly Creek, upstream of the dam wall, and the other across the Warragamba Gorge just downstream from the dam.
These Folly Creek bridge was removed after the dam was built but the bridge over the gorge was kept and incorporated into the beautification works at the dam. In it suffered damage in a bushfire and was subsequently demolished. To meet modern dam safety standards, in the late s the dam wall was strengthened and raised by five metres. In the early s an auxiliary spillway was built to divert floodwaters around the dam in a rare and extreme flood so as to protect the dam and ensure it remains safe in an extreme flood.
A deep water pumping station was established in to allow water to be accessed lower down in the lake during times of drought. To see past notifications, please visit all dam notifications.
Flood notifications indicate the dam is releasing controlled or uncontrolled flows, likely to cause downstream flooding. Regulated releases are when our operations may impact landholders immediately downstream or we are releasing higher than normal flows. Take a self-guided walk around the dam grounds to multiple viewing platforms, interpretive signs and historic machinery.
When completed in , Warragamba Dam was the world's tallest and largest domestic water supply dam. WaterNSW has proposed raising the dam wall to mitigate the risk to human life and to property in the flood plain of the Hawkesbury-Nepean catchment in the event of a major flood.
But the plan, which would see flood waters temporarily held inside the Blue Mountains world heritage area and then released in a controlled way, has faced strong opposition because of the effects it would have on threatened species, cultural heritage sites and the outstanding values of the world heritage area. The EIS states the project would significantly reduce the risk of flood exposure to thousands of vulnerable people and their homes and that raising the wall would give emergency services more time to prepare and safely evacuate people.
It estimates about hectares acres of the world heritage area would be affected in a major flood event. But environment groups, experts and an MP said the potential effects of the project had been understated at multiple stages in the 86 documents.
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