Upper Yarra Reservoir
| Upper Yarra Reservoir | |||||||
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| Coordinates | 37 ° 40 ′ 37 ″ S , 145 ° 54 ′ 0 ″ E | ||||||
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| Construction time: | 1948-1957 | ||||||
| Data on the reservoir | |||||||
| Reservoir length | 20 km | ||||||
| Reservoir width | 0.8 km | ||||||
| Storage space | 200 million m³ | ||||||
The Upper Yarra Reservoir is a reservoir on the upper reaches of the Yarra River east of Melbourne , about 20 km east of the resort of Warburton in the Australian state of Victoria .
Since the Yarra River at the time of the snowmelt repeatedly led to major floods along its middle and lower reaches, the planning of a dam began in the 1930s . The construction permit was granted in the early 1940s, but the Second World War delayed the start of construction work until 1948. The dam, a 90 m high and 610 m long earth and stone rubble dam , was completed in 1957.
The reservoir has a capacity of 200 million cubic meters and is used today, together with other reservoirs in the Yarra Ranges, mainly to supply drinking water to the places in the Yarra Valley and the metropolitan region of Greater Melbourne. The lake is partly fed by the introduction of water from the Thomson River Reservoir . The catchment area of the reservoir covers around 33,670 hectares , and when fully utilized the lake has a surface area of 750 hectares.
Since 1988, the entire catchment area of the Upper Yarra has been classified and closed as a drinking water protection area . The Yarra Dam is the last point upstream that is visible to the general public, but is itself closed, except for those authorized to do so. The first place the river flows through below the dam is Reefton, but it is not until Warburton that the river, surrounded by forested mountains, and its banks are generally accessible.
literature
- K. Otto: Yarra , Text Publishing, Melbourne, 2005 ( ISBN 1-920885-78-1 )