Dam levels hold up as winter ends

The dams supplying water to Windhoek and other central areas of Namibia are now storing more than five times the volume of water they contained a year ago.

The Namibia Water Corporation (NamWater) reported on Monday that Von Bach, Swakoppoort and Omatako dams now have 114.5 million cubic metres of water in storage, which translates to about 74% of their total storage capacity of 154.5 million cubic metres.

A year ago, the three dams, from which part of the water being supplied to Windhoek is sourced, had 21.9 million cubic metres (14.2% of their combined capacity) in storage.

Hardap Dam near Mariental, which was filled to only 8.7% of its storage capacity a year ago, when it held about 25.6 million cubic metres of water, now has about 196 million cubic metres of water in storage (66.6% of capacity), NamWater reported.

The company further noted that the Naute Dam near Keetmanshoop received an inflow of about one million cubic metres of water during the past week, when rain fell over parts of southern Namibia

The main current dam levels reported by NamWater, with the dams’ readings at the corresponding time a year ago in brackets, are:
Swakoppoort 87.7% (25.4%)
Von Bach 92.7% (12.2%)
Omatako 34% (empty)
Hardap 66.6% (8.7%)
Neckartal 97.8% (80.5%)
Naute 93.8% (40.6%)
Oanob 70.4% (37.4%)
Dreihuk 26.8% (12.9%)
Otjivero Main 45.9% (2.7%)
Otjivero Silt 6.5% (0.5%)
Tilda Viljoen 35.7% (3.1%)
Daan Viljoen 31% (0.7%)
Olushandja 68.7% (46.7%)
Friedenau 59.5% (49%)

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