Get Ready and sign up for a free Dam Release Notification service Seqwater is encouraging people to sign up for a free Dam Release Notification service as part of Get Ready Week. Seqwater Chief Executive Officer, Terri Benson, said Get Ready Week was about building community resilience to deal with the extreme weather events that are part of living in Queensland. “While we can’t prevent extreme weather events, we can be better prepared and more self-reliant,” Ms Benson said. “Signing up for the Dam Release Notification service allows South East Queensland residents to ‘opt in’ to receive information about flood water releases from Seqwater dams.” The free Dam Release Notification service provides subscribers with notifications by email, text messages to mobile phones or recorded messages to telephone landlines. Subscribers can choose to receive notifications about dam water releases from only the dams in their local area. South East Queenslanders can subscribe by registering online at seqwater.au. Subscribers may change their contact details, property details or the dams selected for flood release notifications at any time. “There are currently more than 1900 people signed up to the service, which covers Seqwater’s 26 dams across South East Queensland,” Ms Benson said. “It’s important to remember that a flood water release from a dam, whether through the opening of a dam gate or as a result of a spillway flow from an un-gated dam, is only one source of the water contributing to flows in rivers or watercourses downstream of the dam.” “Subscribers need to be aware of other sources of potential flooding, including flows from catchments downstream of the dam, overland flows from adjoining or nearby land, localised flash flooding downstream of the dam, and stormwater system releases. “People should consider information available from other sources, including details of road closures, inundation flood mapping and information about any evacuation arrangements from local councils and disaster management groups; weather forecasts and information on river level changes at particular gauge locations available from the Bureau of Meteorology; and emergency services warnings, including from the police and Emergency Management Queensland. For more information on Seqwater’s Dam Release Notification service, please visit seqwater.au For more information on Get Ready Week, visit disaster.qld.gov.au/getready/ About Seqwater dams and flood water releases Seqwater owns and operates 26 dams in the South East Queensland region. These dams form part of the SEQ Water Grid that provides drinking water supplies for the people of South East Queensland. The dams are either: · gated dams, for example Wivenhoe, Somerset and North Pine Dams, with gates that can be operated during flood events to provide flood mitigation capacity. Flood event operations may require Seqwater to release flood waters from its dams; or · ungated dams, with a spillway over which flood waters will flow once the dam is full. The spillway of each dam is at a lower height than the dam embankment so that flood water can flow over the spillway and safely out of the dam. These structures are not designed to hold flood water, and cannot be operated for flood mitigation purposes. The notifications issued by Seqwater will contain different information depending upon the type of dam(s) selected by the subscriber. If the subscriber chooses to receive information on gated dams, the notification will tell the subscriber about the likely flow rates and timing for flood water releases from each selected dam. If the subscriber chooses to receive information on ungated dams, the notification will tell the subscriber that the dam is spilling or that spilling is about to commence. Seqwater is unable to provide information on the volume and timing of flood releases from each ungated dam.
Posted on: Fri, 18 Oct 2013 07:22:50 +0000
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