Capacity
The reservoir's usable capacity is 2,027,000,000,000 Litres. Before the Deep Water Storage Recovery project completed in April 2006, the usable capacity was 1,857,000,000,000 L.
There are fears, however, that population pressures may stretch the reservoir's ability to furnish Sydneysiders with needed water well into the 21st century. The city's population is rising by about 50,000 every year, and water restrictions were imposed late in 2003; a serious drought would complicate matters.
There have been times when the lake has been seriously depleted. Since it was last full in 1998 the Warragamba Dam catchment area experienced extremely low rainfall, and on 8 February 2007 the lake recorded an all time low of 32.5% of capacity, although this had returned to 60% by late 2008. To prevent any chances of water supply failure, the NSW State government approved the building of a Desalination plant at Kurnell to augment Sydney's water supply.
As of 1 March 2012 (2012 -03-01) the dam level was at 94.6% and rising. It was predicted to overflow within a day.
Read more about this topic: Lake Burragorang
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