Gauteng rain water has been at an all time high these last few days. In the space of a week the Vaal Dam went from empty to nearly 100% full, now what?
Now that Gauteng rain water has replenished all the dams and water holding sources, the public wants to know what happens next? Where does the water released from the Vaal Dam Sluices go? What does this mean for farmers?
Our recent article about the Vaal saw a bunch of our readers leaving some really good questions!
We decided to answer a few of the questions to the best of our ability, each answer has been researched and all relevant information is linked at the bottom of this post in the sources section.
“Does this help farmers further down the river course? Or fill other smaller dams?” – Marion Brown
The Vaal Dam is connected to the Vaal River which flows westward towards the Orange River. It is 1,120 kilometres long, and forms the border between Mpumalanga, Gauteng and North West Province on its north bank, and the Free State on its South.
Some of the water becomes part of the Vaalharts Irrigation Scheme, which is one of the largest irrigation schemes in the world covering 369.50 square kilometres in the Northern Cape Province of South Africa. A diversion weir, redirects water near Warrenton, off the Vaal river and flows through a 1,176km long network of canals.
This system provides irrigation water to a total of 39,820 hectares of scheduled land, industrial water to six towns and other industrial water users.
It also links to the Vaalharts Storage Weir which stores water that is diverted from the Vaal River.
“After the raising of the dam in 1967, it has a storage capacity of 45 million m³. It diverts water into a concrete lined canal on the right flank with a capacity of 40 m³/s. This canal supplies water to approximately 37000 ha of irrigation, most of which is located in the Vaalhartz and Barkly Government Water Schemes.”
We are happy to discover that the water ends up in a few great places, helps irrigate farms and small towns and is also stored in other Dam’s where water is not as abundant.
“Where does this “released water” end up?” – Jean Reed
The released Vaal Dam water ends up in the Vaal River, which joins up to the Orange river and eventually makes its way out at the mouth of Alexander Bay into the Atlantic Ocean or up into Lesotho via the Orange Free State.
The water benefits a number of provinces and the towns that surround the water source. The water also ends up in Namibia as the Orange River borders Namibia and the Northern Cape.
Along the way the water ends up in towns, irrigation farms and being stored as we mentioned in the previous answer above.
The Gauteng rain water has done wonders for the ‘drought’ stats but as a whole we should continue to conserve water to the best of our abilities. We can work together to avoid water shortages in the future.
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