Professor Hubert Chanson has been watching the recent rainfall and floods in North Queensland with interest particularly the Burdekin Falls Dam, which was overtopped, and the spillway has been spilling large water discharges for days. Behind the dam, Lake Dalrymple is the largest water storage in Queensland and can hold 3.7 times the Sydney Harbour volume, at full supply level (FSL). Wanting to get up close and personal, Professor Chanson saw firsthand the spillway in operation on 13 February 2025 noting "The sheer magnitude of the spillway flow left me speechless! Every dam engineer should see and experience in person this type of major spillway operation." Professor Chanson commented “The site visit was very impressive. Among the major lessons to be learned, the noise of the spill is deafening. And you feel very, very small compared to “Mother Nature". You simply cannot fight the floodwaters but [need to] work with them: We need to be smart engineers". For those interested in a few facts and figures. The spill discharge was about 13,500 m3/s at the time. It was enormous and the water release corresponded to 1.17xE+12 litres of water per day, or 3.2 times the Sydney Harbour volume per day. The rate of energy dissipation at the time was gigantic, and about the electrical output of 6 nuclear power reactors of 900 MW each. The amount of energy dissipation was equivalent to about the energy released by 7 Hiroshima atomic bombs per day. Simply, the engineering of such a large dam spillway is not simple and requires advanced engineering expertise, skills and experience. Professor Chanson acknowledges the help and support of Sunwater and its staff for the visit.
This web site was launched by Prof. Michele Mossa of the Polytechnic University of Bari (Italy) with the initial support of Fondazione Caripuglia, Bari, Italy for the Research Project LIC-MON of 2003 and of the Project IMCA (Integrated Monitoring of Coastal Areas) financed by MIUR PON D.M. 593/00. Later, the initiative was supported with other Prof. Michele Mossa’s funds, most recently provided by the RITMARE Project.
