Ben Chifley Dam

Ben Chifley Dam, or Chifley Dam, is a rock and earth-fill embankment dam across the Campbells River in the central west region of New South Wales, Australia. The main purpose of the dam is to supply potable water to the city of Bathurst.

The dam is named in honour of Ben Chifley, a former Prime Minister of Australia, Member for Macquarie and resident of Bathurst.

Location and features
The dam is located 17 km upstream of Bathurst. Water is released into the Campbells River which flows into the Macquarie River before being captured at the water treatment facility at Gorman's Hill, a suburb of Bathurst.

The dam wall is 34.4 m high and 455 m long and holds back 30800 ML of water when at full capacity. The surface area of the reservoir is 2.2 ha and the catchment area is 960 km2. The 455 m long uncontrolled side-channel concrete spillway and six plug auxiliary fuse plug spillway has a discharge capacity of 9800 m3/s. With an average daily inflow of around 35 ML per day, as at April 2013, filtered water consumption averaged 18.9 ML, with a further 8.4 ML of treated water returned to the Macquarie River.

History
Construction of Ben Chifley Dam started in 1948 and was completed eight years later. It was officially opened by the Premier of New South Wales, Joseph Cahill on 10 November 1956. The dam then succeeded Winburndale Dam as the potable-water supply for Bathurst. Winburndale Dam had been built in 1934 with an expected life of 20 years. Since completion of Ben Chifley Dam, Winburndale has been used to supply raw water for park watering and industrial use.

Plans to upgrade the Ben Chifley Dam commenced in 1989 after it was realised it did not meet the New South Wales Dam Safety Committee's safety recommendations and could fail in the event of a severe flood. A flood in August 1998, the worst recorded in 175 years, caused water to run over the spillway at a depth of 2.74 m, just 0.1 m below the level at which the wall was expected to fail. An evacuation plan was implemented downstream.

Construction to upgrade the dam started in 1999. The top of the wall was raised by 5.4 m and the spillway was extended by 30 m, increasing the dam's capacity from 16000 ML to 30800 ML.