Upgrade of Hazelmere Dam commissioned

The Department of Water and Sanitation has completed a project to raise the Hazelmere Dam wall by seven metres to increase capacity of storage to augment the water supply to areas in the North Coast.

22-11-2024
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Rising Sun Chatsworth
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The project scope of the work entailed the raising of the dam wall from 86 metres to 93 metres. This included the construction of retrofitting a Piano Key Weir (PKW) onto an existing dam spillway structure, the installation of 83 rock anchors, as well as foundation grouting and other minor related works.

Water and sanitation minister, Pemmy Majodina recently commissioned the newly upgraded Hazelmere Dam. The commissioning of the dam comes after the Department of Water and Sanitation completed a project to raise the dam wall by seven metres to increase capacity of storage as well as augment water supply to areas such as Verulam, Groutville, Blythedale, and Ballito.

Minister Majodina said the North Coast has experienced rapid growth in recent years, especially in the housing sector which resulted in an increased demand for potable water.

“The Department of Water and Sanitation upgraded the Hazelmere Dam wall to meet the needs of the increasing population in the North Coast as it is our role to ensure bulk water supply. The concerned municipalities should now roll up their sleeves to ensure that water is directed to households,” said Minister Majodina.

Minister Majodina expressed that the Hazelmere Dam forms part of the country’s state-of-the-art dams. “The Hazelmere Dam can now be measured against world-class standards due to the type of spillway selection, technology, and innovation used in implementing the project,” she said.

The dam has an uncontrolled PKW spillway, this was done to ensure that the dam wall withstands extreme concentration of floods of between six and eight hours for the dam catchment area. Some of the employed technologies undertaken to upgrade the dam wall included the world’s highest PKW, the world’s largest anchors were installed to improve stability of the concrete gravity dam wall structure, and the largest capacity post-tensioning stressing jacks were deployed during construction.

Some of the technologies employed included the use of innovative data management software for real-time monitoring of anchor performance, and 3D digital crack meters.

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