The ANCOLD guidelines (Speaker Mark Arnold)

What are the ANCOLD guidelines and how do they apply to our Retarding Basin Program

Duration
00:59
Audio described version
Transcript

I'm Mark Arnold and I'm Melbourne Water's Principal Dams Engineer.

I'm also the site representative for the Australian National Committee on Large Dams, that's ANCOLD.

Melbourne Water manages over 200 retarding basins in and around Melbourne, ranging in height from small holes in the ground to quite large embankments.

A retarding basin is basically a flood retention storage that holds back water during extreme flood events to prevent flooding downstream.

The ANCOLD guidelines provides a consistent, defensible framework for assessing risk across all dams and allows us to prioritise safety upgrade works across our portfolio of dams.

That framework looks at all types of dams that are at risk from flood overtopping to internal erosion of embankments that might cause failure and impacts on downstream communities.

The retarding basins are an important part of our drainage network, they're important because they prevent flooding downstream and impacts on properties and we have to continue to make sure they operate in a safe manner.