Vaal River Barrage

Vanderbijlpark district,
Gauteng

Date:1923
Status:Unknown

 

Coordinates:
26°45'53.62" S 27°41'03.41" E Alt: 1011m

Notes:

Situated 80km downstream from the Vaal Dam, one of the earliest large dams in South Africa, built and owned privately for the Rand Water Board as seat of their water supply to the Pretoria-Witwatersrand-Vereeniging region. A gated-concrete cavity structure with gross storage capacity of 56 712 cubic meters from a catchment area of 47 118 square kilometers which once supplied water to some 16 000 square kilometers for domestic and industrial use, but now too contaminated for consumption and the dam now only serving recreational purposes.

See also Wikipedia.


References:

Murray, Tony. 2015. Megastructures and masterminds : great feats of civil engineering in southern Africa. Cape Town: Tafelberg. pg 174-181

South African National Committee on Large Dams. 1994. Large dams and water systems in South Africa. Pretoria: SANCOLD. pg 203, 204