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Sideling Creek Dam at Lake Kurwongbah in South East Queensland will receive $20 million in improvement works to enable it to continue to operate safely into the future.

Construction work for the upgrade is scheduled to begin in May 2018 and is being carried out in line with Seqwater’s Dam Improvement Program.

The dam, which was commissioned in 1957 and upgraded in 1969, will undergo work to strengthen the main embankment of the dam and its concrete spillway.

Once the upgrade is completed, the water storage will return to its normal level after it was lowered in 2015.

Construction site mobilisation is expected to begin in mid-May 2018, with the project expected to take 12 months to complete.

This safety improvement will be one of the permanent legacies of the project.

Seqwater Acting Chief Executive Officer, Dan Spiller, said the Dam Improvement Program allowed South East Queensland’s water storages to continue to operate safely into the future.

Mr Spiller said Sideling Creek Dam was one of a number of dams across the region to be upgraded over the next five years.

“Dams are long-life assets and require continual assessment, monitoring and maintenance,” Mr Spiller said.

“Over the years, there have been advances in dam design and we now have a greater understanding of extreme weather such as floods and earthquakes.”

The upgrade will include

  • Installing a new sand filter buttress along the downstream shoulder of the main dam, as well as a creating a stabilising weighting berm. This involves strengthening the main dam wall and spillway to help the structures withstand earthquakes, extreme weather events and to comply with current engineering standards and safety guidelines
  • The height of the spillway guide walls and upper chute walls on both sides will be raised and reinforced to add additional flood mitigation and manage the impact of extreme weather events to future proof the dam against the impacts of climate change
  • A plunge pool downstream of the spillway will be constructed to manage erosion, protect the structure and improve fish movement downstream
  • The spillway slot will be reinstated which means the lake will return to its original full supply level 

Charlotte Pordage is Editor of Utility magazine, a position she has held since November 2018. She joined the team as an Associate Editor in October 2017, after sharpening her writing and editing skills across a range of print and digital publications. Charlotte graduated from Royal Holloway, University of London, in 2011 with joint honours in English and Latin. When she's not putting together Australia's only dedicated utility magazine, she can usually be found riding her horse or curled up with a good book.

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