Dartmouth Dam

Dartmouth Reservoir is the most upstream storage in the River Murray System. Dartmouth Dam. It impounds the waters of the Mitta Mitta River about 24 km from the township of Mitta Mitta in north-eastern Victoria. It is the largest capacity dam in Victoria and has the highest embankment of any dam in Australia. When full, the dam stores 3 906 GL of high quality water from the surrounding alpine areas of Victoria. When required, it supplements releases from Hume Dam and increases supplies to the River Murray system which is particularly important in dry seasons. High quality water released from the Dam helps to reduce salinity in the downstream reaches.

Purpose

Dartmouth Reservoir is the Commission’s largest storage and when full represents 44% of the system’s total storage capacity. Its primary function is to increase security of supply. It also provides increased annual supplies of water to New South Wales and Victoria and has increased the minimum annual entitlement to South Australia from 1 550 to 1 850 GL.

The primary use of water stored in Dartmouth Reservoir is to replenish storage in Hume Reservoir to assist in meeting downstream water supply requirements. Transferring water from Dartmouth Reservoir provides water in Hume Reservoir for downstream water requirements and maintains the water level in Hume at the height needed to operate the irrigation valves and power station.

The Catchment

The catchment area of the Dartmouth Reservoir is 3 611 square kilometres, less than a quarter of the catchment of Hume Reservoir and only about 0.34% of the Murray-Darling Basin. Nevertheless, about 12% of the total inflow to the River Murray is generated upstream of Dartmouth Reservoir. The entire catchment of Dartmouth Dam is within the State of Victoria.

Rain is the most common form of precipitation over the Dartmouth catchment, although snow is also important over 1 400 m. Areas of the catchment over 1,400 m include the eastern slopes of Mt. Hotham and Mt. Bogong. The catchment produces very high quality mountain water.