Dartmouth Dam

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 the town of Mitta Mitta away. The barrier creates the artificial Lake Dartmouth, the water from the " High Country " stores in Victoria to make it in the summer in the Mitta Mitta ( and further below located Lake Hume ) drain from where it flows into the larger Murray River and is used there for the irrigation. The main purpose of the Dartmouth - lock is to keep the water level in Lake Hume constant. From here, water is supplied to New South Wales and South Australia.

The dam is constructed of a core of the earth with two-sided rock beds and is 180 m high. He is the highest dam in Australia and also the highest. The reservoir has a storage space of 3906 million m³; it is the largest in Victoria. In normal operation, it can discharge a maximum outflow of about 10,000 million liters per day, which works out at 116 m³ / s The inflow and outflow capacity of the dam are relatively low, based on its size. This has the consequence that the water level can also vary only within narrow limits, as compared to other dams on the Murray River and its tributaries. For the water surface, there are different data: 62, 79 or 97 km ². The shoreline is 50 km long.

Since its completion in 1979, the dam is only overflowed twice, once in 1998 and again (probably) 1999. Overflow 1998 came about because of an accident in which two steel beams penetrated the ( unattended ) turbine of the hydropower plant, which is installed at the dam and the generator delivers 200 MW. By acting forces the power house and the control facilities were badly damaged, making it impossible for the water of the nearly full reservoir controlled discharge. We improvised and installed quickly large pipes over the spillway of time to conduct the water to the siphon principle out. But the inflow was due to an unusually wet spring, so large that the dam would have flooded anyway. This led to a spectacular water cascade over the big rock steps that were formed when the dam material was removed from the valley walls. - A later study could not clarify how the steel beams had come there.

The Dartmouth Reservoir is the memory of the most upstream located in the River Murray system. It contains 44% of all the water of this river system. Its catchment area is located entirely in Victoria. It is partly about 1400 m high on the slopes of Mount Hotham and Mount Bogong, so that precipitates there fall as snow. The water quality is very good.