Place Type
Reserves - Reservoir,Dam
Location
41.91kms West of Brisbane - Driving 68.6 km (56 mins)
729.48kms North of Sydney - Driving 968 km (10 hours 40 mins)
Address & Contact
2470 Brisbane Valley Hwy
Lake Wivenhoe QLD 4306
Phone: N/A
Email: N/A
Web: N/A
Information
Wivenhoe Dam was designed and built as a multifunctional facility. Its primary function is to provide a safe water supply to the people of Brisbane and adjacent Local Authorities.
The dam has been built across the Brisbane River about 80 kilometres by road from the centre of Brisbane. At full supply level the dam will hold 1.16 million megalitres, or about 2000 times the daily water consumption of Brisbane. The construction of Wivenhoe Dam, when added to the existing water supply at Somerset and North Pine Dams, is expected to meet water demand for the Brisbane area for the next twenty years.
Technical Data:
Wivenhoe Dam consists of an earth and rock embankment 2.3 kilometres long and 50 metres high, measured from the lowest foundation to the crest, with a concrete spillway section on which five steel crest gates are installed. These gates, 12 metres wide and 16.6 metres high, are amongst the largest of their type in the world. The dam has a total storage capacity of 2.61 million megalitres, of which 1.16 million megalitres is used for urban water storage. Some 200 separate properties were acquired to provide the 33,750 hectares of land required for the dam. The catchment area of the dam is 5554 square kilometres. The construction of the dam involved the placement of around 4 million cubic metres of earth and rock fill, and around 140,000 cubic metres of concrete in the spillway section. Excavation of 2 million cubic metres of earth and rock was necessary to construct the spillway. The Brisbane Valley Highway has been relocated to pass over the dam wall, while 65 kilometres of the road and a number of new bridges were required following construction of the dam.