Dartmouth Dam
| Dartmouth Dam | |||||
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| Coordinates | 36 ° 37 ′ 0 ″ S , 147 ° 32 ′ 0 ″ E | ||||
| Data on the structure | |||||
| Construction time: | ... - 1979 | ||||
| Height above foundation level : | 180 m | ||||
| Crown length: | 670 m | ||||
| Power plant output: | 200 MW | ||||
| Data on the reservoir | |||||
| Altitude (at congestion destination ) | 486 m | ||||
| Water surface | 62, 79 or 97 km² | ||||
| Storage space | 3906 million m³ | ||||
| Catchment area | 3611 km² | ||||
| Design flood : | > 116 m³ / s | ||||
The Dartmouth Dam is a large dam on the Mitta Mitta River in the northeastern part of the Australian state of Victoria . It is located 24 km from Mitta Mitta. The lock creates the artificial lake Lake Dartmouth , the water from the "High Country" in Victoria stores to make it in the summer in the Mitta Mitta (and further downstream situated Lake Hume , from where it is in the larger) drain Murray River flows and is used there for irrigation. The main purpose of the Dartmouth Lock is to keep the water level in Lake Hume constant. From here, water is delivered to New South Wales and South Australia .
The dam is built from a core of the earth with rock beds on both sides and is 180 m high. This makes it the highest dam in Australia and also the highest. The reservoir has a storage space of 3906 million m³; he's the tallest in Victoria. During normal operation it can drain a maximum outflow of approximately 10,000 million liters per day, which is the equivalent of 116 m³ / s. The inflow and outflow capacities of the dam are relatively small, based on its size. As a result, the water level can only fluctuate within narrow limits compared to other dams on the Murray and its tributaries. There are different figures for the water area: 62, 79 or 97 km². The shoreline is 50 km long.
Since it was completed in 1979, the dam has only overflowed twice, once in 1998 and again (probably) in 1999. The overflow in 1998 came about as a result of an accident in which two steel girders penetrated the (unattended) turbine of the hydropower plant , which is installed on the dam and their generator has an output of 200 MW . The power house and the control facilities were severely damaged by the forces acting, making it impossible to drain the water from the almost full reservoir in a controlled manner. They improvised and quickly installed large pipes over the flood relief to divert the water out using the siphon principle . But the inflow was so great, due to an unusually wet spring, that the dam would have been flooded anyway. This led to a spectacular water cascade over the large rock steps that were created when the dam material was removed from the valley walls. - A later investigation could not clarify how the steel girders got there.
Dartmouth Reservoir is the reservoir that is furthest upstream in the River Murray system. It contains 44% of the total water in this river system. Its catchment area is entirely in Victoria. It is partly over 1400 m high on the mountain slopes of Mount Hotham and Mount Bogong, so that precipitation there also falls as snow. The water quality is very good.
