I don't normally do dams on other continents because the USA has more than I can cope with. But I don't normally see a dam spilling so much water that homes are being significantly flooded.
Storm Report SA posted nine photos with the comment: "Beautiful images taken by Rudi this morning of the Vaal Dam. The dam currently has 12 gates open."
[According to some of the comments, other parts of South Africa are in a drought.
And some comments confirm that this plant has no hydropower. Other comments say that is because most years they would not be able to generate power because of the need to conserve water.]
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| Robyn Bothma commented on the post It's beautiful , until you see what it's doing to people's homes. Juanita Botha: Robyn Bothma is this around the dam or lower down the river? |
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| Gene Booysen responded to Juanita's question This is lower down the river. |
Is the fourth gate closed now because that spillway normally gets plenty of wear?
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| Adele Duvenage, Nov 2022 |
If three more gates makes that kind of impact on the trees, I wonder what 12 gates is doing to the trees.
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| Nikesh M (nikkxs), Jan 2022 |
Even with eight gates open in Nov 2022, they were worried about downstream flooding.
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| ewn [They must have just opened those two gates because the tumble bay is still rather dry. I don't see gates showing above the dam, so are the gates partially open?] "The Department of Water and Sanitation says it’s the first time in 21 years that eight Vaal Dam gates have been opened to assist with flood management....Nearby communities have been warned that the opening of the gate will cause heavy flooding." |
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| We Are South Africans Did you know? The Vaal Dam has x60 crest gates (kruinsluise). Normal flow on a normal day in the Vaal River passing Three Rivers is around 16 cumecs. Yesterday, the Dept of Water Affairs announced, with huge fanfare, that they opened x2 of those gates. Current (29 Dec 2021) flow past Three Rivers is in the order of 300 cumecs. But in February 1975 they pulled open all, yes all x60 of those x60 crest gates (see the picture). And 4000 cumecs of water thundered past Three Rivers & Peacehaven, and overnight raised the normal water level by around 9.5 metres Leon Delport Paul Sabatier: I was a Signaller in the army. We were deployed from Wits Command to Vereeniging to assist with the evacuation of the civilians. I plotted the high water mark each hour on the map. At one stage the water rose from ground level to the crossbar of the rugby posts in 2 hours.[Are the gates all the way open? I don't see them above the dam. I'm assuming that "cumecs" is cubic meters per sec. So 4000 is 141kcfs. To help put that in perspective, the design capacity of the original spillway for the Oroville Dam was 125kcfs.] |
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| ruralexploration.co.za via citizen Normally, people in this area have to conserve water because a full dam is the exception. The dam opened in 1938. The storage capacity was increased in 1956 by raising the concrete crest and adding the row of sluice gates. It was increased again in 1985 by adding taller sluice gates. "The last time [as of Nov 2020] the dam reached 100% capacity was in January 2011, when 14 sluice gates had to be opened to release the water, which was flowing at 1 800m3/sec." [But 1800cumecs is only 64kcfs. So the gates must have been just partially opened since now 12 gates are spilling 141kcfs.] |
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