SA Water has completed a $6.3 million upgrade of the Tod River Dam on Eyre Peninsula in South Australia as part of a larger body of works to align the state’s dams with updated national dam safety guidelines.
The Tod River Dam is about 27km north of Port Lincoln and is supplied from the Toolillie Creek catchment.
It was taken offline in 2002 due to high levels of salinity, making it unsuitable as a drinking water supply.
SA Water’s safety upgrade of the dam will not prevent it from being brought back online in the future, and does not rule out future works to raise the level and volume of the reservoir.
However, this would need to be validated against cost and need in terms of other available quality water sources in the region.
Work involved in the upgrade included:
- Lowering the dam’s maximum water volume and increasing its flood capacity
- Modifications to the dam outlet to better manage water releases
- Alterations to the intake channels to better manage flood capacity risk
- Modifications to existing causeways downstream, including the installation of several flood gauges
The next stage of works has begun at the Tod River Dam which involves revegetation around the reservoir.
Minister for Water and the River Murray, Ian Hunter, said the revegetation work will continue in a seasonal phased approach until mid-2019.
“[The revegetation] will involve planting more than 15,000 seedlings, made up of more than 40 species of native trees, shrubs and groundcovers,” Mr Hunter said.
“This will be supplemented by around 48kg of native seeds, which have been collected from Tod and other surrounding reserves.”
