Rain adds six weeks' supply to Sydney's dams - Minister Phillip Costa MP - 2 December 2010
Minister for Water Phil Costa today announced Sydney’s dams are at their highest level in more than a year.
Minister Costa said above average rainfall had pushed dam levels over 60 percent for the first time since last August.
“Over the past week, we had an additional 50 billion litres of water flow into our dams – that’s the equivalent of about six weeks’ supply,” Minister Costa said.
“In the first couple of days of December, we saw around 57 millimetres of rainfall over the Warragamba catchment – this is a staggering amount of rain, given the long term average rainfall for the whole month of December is 65 millimetres.
“This follows on from a wetter than average spring – this spring we saw 240 millimetres falling over the Warragamba catchment, which is well above the long term median of 192 millimetres.
“If there’s one upshot to all this miserable weather, our dams will be in good shape heading into the hot summer months.
“This good rainfall has seen total storage levels increase by 2.3 percent to 61.6 percent this week and we expect to see a further increase in storage levels next week.
“Our largest storage, Warragamba Dam, has reached 60.5 percent capacity for the first time since November 2008."
Mr Costa explained the catchments are capable of absorbing a great deal of water and when the catchments are dry it takes a significant amount of rain to generate good inflows.
“Right now the catchments are wet, so any further good rain should generate inflows,” he said.
“To put it in perspective, we would need to see at least four days of 50 millimetres per day rainfall across the entire 16,000 square kilometre catchment area to see the total storage level reach 100 percent.”
Warragamba Dam was last at 100 percent of capacity in 1998.
