Lake Mokoan
Australia · Oceania
About
The Mokoan Dam is a decommissioned earth-filled embankment dam across Winton Swamp, located approximately 7 kilometres (4.3 mi) north-east of Benalla, in northern Victoria, Australia. Completed in 1971, the resultant reservoir, Lake Mokoan, was also fed through off-stream storage by water diverted from the Broken River and Hollands Creek into the Winton and Green swamps – a former wetlands system. Operated by Goulburn–Murray Water, the dam was a source of supply of potable water and irrigation.
Ongoing environmental issues – including algal blooms, significant water loss from evaporation, costs of operating the reservoir as a water supply, and dam safety upgrade costs – caused frequent interruptions to supply due to, in part, not completing the intended works downstream of the reservoir making the reservoir inefficient. In 2004, the Victorian Government decided to decommission the dam and transform the former Lake Mokoan into the Winton Wetlands. Decommissioning work was completed between 2009 and 2011, with estimates that the new wetlands may take between 30–40 years, or up to 100 years to return to its natural conditions.
Adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA)。Photography via Wikimedia Commons.