An amazing thing has happened in Botswana for which we need to praise the Lord!
The Gaborone Dam is virtually full!
AND not only that but the Dam levels rose over 60% in just four and a half days to be 97.1 % full!
That's the equivelent of 320 Olympic size (2m deep 50mx25m) swimming pools gushing into the dam every hour for 108 hours!!!
While this dam is only 141,100,000 cubic meters in size, it is meant to serve as the main water supply for the Capital city and we who live here have longed to see it at least mostly full.
On Sunday night 19 February 2017 after some good rains so far this wet season the Dam level was 35.8% full. That was thrilling in and of itself since it hadn't been that full for more than 10 years. Wikipedia states:
By the end of 2002 the reservoir was 79% full, and by the start of 2004 it was 54% full.[10] By the end of 2004 the reservoir was just 27% full and the government was forced to impose harsh restrictions on water use.[11] By September 2005 the reservoir was down to 17% full, or 34 litres (7.5 imp gal; 9.0 US gal) per citizen of Gaborone.[11]
In the years following, levels didn't change much, and then a few years ago things got worse and worse until the beginning of 2015 when the dam 'failed'. The city had grown, demand for water had increased, and the drought had continued to get worse until last year (2016) which was noted as the driest year for almost 4 decades, and the Dam just couldn't supply.
(notice the tower standing so high out of the puddle of water at the bottom, when only the very top can be seen in the first photo above with the full dam)
After all, in a country with 2m of evaporation a year, the dam needs inflow from rain in the catchment area each year just to keep up with evaporation. And because the terrain here is essentially 'flat', the dam is not very deep and has a large surface area.
Thankfully there was a pipeline from a dam in the north supplementing the supply of water - and it became the main supply for Botswana's capital city and surrounds of over 300,000 people.
The rains have been so good this season that all 9 dams across the country are full except for Thune - a newer dam which is one of the country's largest and is in the central part of Botswana, but it is sitting at about 77% which is still good.
It was exciting to see so many comments on the Botswana Water Utilities facebook page giving thanks to God and reminding people we need to be praising the Lord for the rains.
So with all this water and the dam virtually full, there is hope that my husband might be able to go sailing with his friends again on Gaborone Dam, as he hasn't done so for many years. There is only one problem….the dam is now so unusually high, the yacht club has gone from a problem of no water to too much water…you see the yacht club is on an 'island' in the dam which you can drive out to on a kind of short weir/wall when the dam isn't 'fully full', but a 'ferry' had to be used if the water levels got too high….but the ferry hasn't been needed for almost two decades and we've heard that the guy who ran the ferry has left the country….so we will just have to wait a bit longer for any sailing expeditions!
photo credit - photos of dam used for educational purposes only and sourced from my favourite highly recommended on-line Botswana newspaper mmegi.bw and the sailing photo is my own.
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