Wivenhoe Dam releases to resume over the weekend
Releases from Wivenhoe Dam are set to continue from the weekend and into early next week following a temporary pause on Friday amid ongoing rainfall. Here’s why.
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Releases from Wivenhoe Dam are set to continue from the weekend and into early next week following a temporary pause on Friday amid ongoing rainfall.
About 116,000 megalitres of water has so far been released from Wivenhoe – which is still well below the more than two million megalitres released during the February/March weather event.
The releases were temporarily stopped on Friday morning amid increasing inflows into the Brisbane River from the Lockyer Creek and the Bremer River – which are both downstream from Wivenhoe.
A spokesman for Seqwater confirmed releases from the dam would likely resume over the weekend and continue into early next week.
“The benefit of Wivenhoe is being able to store water in the dam whilst the Bremer and Lockyer flows peak, ultimately reducing the height of the Brisbane River,” he said. “We will continue to respond to the weather conditions and adjust releases as necessary, to mitigate downstream flooding.”
As of 11am Friday, Wivenhoe still had over 88 per cent of its flood storage compartment available. The overall dam level as of 3pm was about 114 per cent. The flow rate from the dam reached a peak of 1300 cubic metres per second (m3/s) on Wednesday night – significantly less than the 3400m3/s experienced at the height of the February/March floods.
The weather bureau was forecasting on Friday that the Brisbane River would experience minor flood peaks of about 1.7m in coming days – lower than the 3.85m peak in the last weather event.
Water Department director-general Graham Fraine said 20 ungated dams in South East Queensland were spilling water.
“At this stage the water treatment plants at North Pine and at Mount Crosby are operating in a standard fashion,” he said.
Originally published as Wivenhoe Dam releases to resume over the weekend
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