Dartmouth Dam expected to spill on Thursday

After sitting at 99 per cent capacity for weeks, recent rain and melting snow have raised water levels to tipping point. Now, tourists have arrived to witness the rare event.

Dartmouth Dam, pictured in September 2022, is expected to spill for the first time in 26 years. The dam has been hovering at about 99 per cent capacity for four weeks. Picture: MDBA

The flow of water over the Dartmouth Dam may still only be a trickle, but tourists arriving to witness the rare event are pouring money in to the tiny north east Victorian town.

The dam’s spillway, the largest water storage system in the Murray Darling Basin, has started to spill tiny amounts of water for the first time since September 1996.

After sitting at 99 per cent capacity for weeks, recent rain and melting snow have raised water levels to tipping point.

The rare event has proven bountiful for the remote town with a population of 100 as tourists flock to the Mitta Valley hamlet.

Dartmouth Pub publican Aaron Scales has been preparing over recent weeks for tourist interest to increase with rising waters, but was swept away by the demand.

Most other years Mr Scales said his establishment may take 70 orders on a September weekend day, maybe.

After lunch service today he had served 245 tables with dozens of bookings already taken for the evening service. The only comparable annual event is when hundreds of anglers descend on the area for fishing competitions.

“It is just a very small trickle at the moment from the dam, but people are keen to come up and have a look. My phone has not stopped with people booking in for a meal,” he said.

“We have tripled our turnover. I hope, after the dam finishes spilling, we get return business once people realise how great it is up here.

“After the Covid lockdowns this is absolutely brilliant. We are living in a small, remote town of 100 people and most of those are retirees.

“We did takeaway food and grog every night during lockdowns but it was just a service, we made no money, that’s for sure.”

Mr Scales suspected he had a big day before him after getting caught in traffic on his way home from picking up produce in Albury.

“There were lines of traffic coming up here, we could only go about 70 to 80km/h all the way back. The last time I saw lines of traffic like that heading here was 1996,” he said.

“I am driving the 90 minutes back to Albury again tomorrow to get more stock. But it is fantastic to have this tourism and all the businesses in the (Mitta) valley are benefiting.”

The Murray Darling Basin Authority are currently releasing water through valves at the base of the dam.

This means that, while surrounding ponds are full and the Hume River lapping at the bank downstream, the dam will only spill in spectacular volume once more rain and melting snow flow into the system.

Isolated showers are predicted across Victoria over the weekend, with a low-pressure system expected bring a significant amount of rain due to arrive late Sunday or early Monday.

Meanwhile, there is minor to moderate flood warning for the Murray and Edward Rivers and minor flood warnings for the Yarra, Kiewa, Avoca, Loddon, Ovens and King Rivers.

SEPTEMBER 21:

The spillway of Dartmouth Dam, the Murray Darling Basin’s largest water storage system, is expected to breach “sometime later tomorrow” for the first time since the onset of the Millennium Drought in 1996.

What will start as a trickle, following significant inflows of recent rain, should gradually build into a spectacular flow as snow melts in the Victorian Alps and NSW high country and predicted rain falls across Central Victoria, NSW and Queensland over the next week.

Victoria’s regulated water storage sits at an average of 94 per cent after an unseasonally wet winter that has resulted in saturated catchments and many rivers and tributaries flowing heavily or in overflow.

Dartmouth Dam, pictured in September 2022, is expected to spill for the first time in 26 years. The dam has been hovering at about 99 per cent capacity for four weeks. Picture: MDBA

Laanecoorie Reservoir Weir, west of Bendigo, is currently spilling almost 9000 megalitres of water a day into the Loddon River system.

Meanwhile, there is an active watch-and-act warning to move to higher ground for the Ovens River down to Rocky Point, moderate flood warning for the Loddon, Ovens and King Rivers and minor warnings for the Yarra, Barwon, Kiewa, Avoca Rivers and for the Murray River upstream of Lake Hume.

BOM meteorologist Ilana Cherny said a low pressure system that moved through SA and NSW overnight dropped between 20 to 30mm of rain over North West Victoria.

She said a cold front should move through Victoria on Friday and bring thunderstorms and 20mm of rain that will fall mainly across East Gippsland.

Isolated showers are predicted across the state over the weekend, with a low-pressure system expected to arrive late Sunday or early Monday and bring a significant amount of rain.

“There are several ongoing flood warnings given recent rainfall and that generally our dams are full and there is already quite significant soil moisture,” Ms Cherny said.

MDBA river management senior director Joe Davis said Dartmouth Dam had been considered effectively full since early August when water was pre-released from the dam to manage air space.

“The flow of water over the spillway at this stage is not expected to impact on the height of the Mitta Mitta River downstream, with flows expected to remain within the river channel at Tallandoon,” he said.

The Mitta Mitta River flows from Dartmouth Dam into the Hume storage, which is currently at almost 97 per cent capacity.

The Bureau of Meteorology recently declared a third consecutive La Nina event was under way in Australia.

Goulburn Murray Water storage services general manager Martina Cusack told The Weekly Times today that several storages in the region were near full supply level or spilling.

“Our River Operations Planning team and storage staff work with the Bureau of Meteorology and SES, on flood management, including providing information about the operation of its storages to help them prepare flood warnings,” she said.

Dartmouth Dam, with a capacity of four million megalitres, is the most upstream storage in the River Murray System and collects almost 10 per cent of the system’s inflow. It will begin to spill “sometime later tomorrow”, according to a Goulburn-Murray Water spokesman.

The dam has physically spilled only four times, all in the 1990s. The peak flow during the 1996 spill was 19,600ML a day.