Cape Town recently had refreshing rainfall, while it hasn’t replenished the dam levels in the Western Cape yet, it’s great seeing a full dam on Table Mountain.
Capetonians rejoiced when the rains started falling earlier this week. The dam levels across the Western Cape filled up by 1.4% more than the week before, meaning they are now at 32.5%. This is still a far cry from where the province needs to be but every drop counts.
Willem Uys was walking on Table Mountain at the Hely-Hutchingson dam, when he noticed that sections of the dam were so full they had started overflowing. He filmed the area where the water had flooded onto the pathway and then spanned over the full dam. A beautiful sight!
Overjoyed by the sight he shared the video onto the Cape Town Watershedding Facebook group and people shared their thanks for sharing such a positive video in a water stressed time.
“Thank you Willem Uys for this post. These dams were great feats of engineering at the time and so asthetically pleasing in 2017.” – Theo Chaplin
“Thank you for your post. This is such good news!” – Anne Parkinson
Nearly every dam on Table Mountain is at 100% currently.
Thankful to see the dams overflowing on Table Mountain!
Posted by Willem Uys on Sunday, 20 August 2017
That dam in the video, Hely-Hutchingson dam, has never gone below 95% this year. For some reason CT has been keeping it full and not using the water.
Some concern because all the overflow now may not all be caught by the tunnel weir and will flow out to sea.
Valves along the Pipe Track (the outlet from Woodhead Tunnel) were damaged during summer, apparently. It was closed while they’ve been fixing them.
http://capetrekking.co.za/table-mountain-history-woohead-dam/