Flood Damage to Lake Eppalock Spillway #2

[@em945]

Must have been so loud. Beautiful production. Thank you for your efforts. Best of luck everyone caught in flooding.

[@brentonclarke]

The sound of all that water would have been deafening for sure

[@prussiaaero1802]

Beautifully filmed.

[@brentonclarke]

Thanks

[@adbb1970]

Wow!!! No wonder there is such devastating flooding downstream! Thanks for posting this

[@brentonclarke]

Yes it is would be pretty devastating for anyone affected by the flood water

[@stevenstart8728]

Thanks for the footage. It would appear to me that the number 2 spillway achieved what it was designed to do. That is save the dam under the most extreme circumstances. Next week is going to be very interesting and hopefully number 2 can handle it again. It is my understanding that it is only the second time water has gone over that spillway.

[@brentonclarke]

Yes correct. It will be interesting to see what happens when the next lot of rain comes through and if we continue to get more rain for a while

[@janandrobhageman1254]

Water has such power !!

[@brentonclarke]

Indeed. I was out there about a week earlier and it has changed a lot since just from all of the flood water coming through

[@bigkevza]

Great vid thank-you

[@brentonclarke]

Thank you for the positive comment

[@smitajky]

When you think of all the places that had not foreseen the possibility of this type of flood it is amazing that a hundred years ago someone had made a plan for it. Which avoided the spectre of a catastrophic dam wall collapse.

[@stevemurrell6167]

Great footage.

[@brentonclarke]

Thanks

[@mountainconstructions]

Wondered how Epi was looking like FMD!!!! That's incredible

[@gavanwhatever8196]

Thanks for posting this. VicRoads doesn't include this road in their closures map. I was planning the same journey as you and then head across to Marysville. Guess not...

[@brentonclarke]

I just checked vicroads and if it wasn’t listed earlier it is listed now as knowsley-eppalock road closure. I just know it as spillway rd so had to refer to the map

[@sweetpeascraftingintheburb4462]

Iv not been there for long time ty for this video x

[@jackidosen1791]

🪃🦘,OMG WTF that was a great volume of water 💧 😳, thanks for the video 📹 😀, Cheers 🍺👍👌,take care and stay safe.

[@helenellsworth9556]

I remember lake eppalock and the spillway, majestic,

[@brentonclarke]

It is pretty amazing to see the spillway in action

[@helenellsworth9556]

@@brentonclarke it sure is, I know it can be destructive but there's beauty in the power of water, especially with camera in hand

[@helenellsworth9556]

@@brentonclarke I use to live in Bendigo

[@MysterAitch]

ex Longlea fam here... never seen this level of water ever!!!

[@brentonclarke]

Yes it has been a pretty wet year and more to come later on this week

[@neil9274]

Looks like a good place to some metal detecting,maybe some gold has come out

[@brentonclarke]

There are plenty of crevasses for gold to settle in if there is gold in the area

[@DTGTDetectingTheGoldenTriangle]

Was thinking the same thing haha 👌👍

[@barryrahn5957]

I watched this when you first posted this video and now again months later. Ferocious, water don't fool around! Many millions for a new road and spillway. Do you have an after reconstruction video?

[@brentonclarke]

I will look to go back and check it out as I have not been back either

[@koreanature]

Wow... !!! My best friend, You Great Good... !!! I wish you every day of your development. Best Relaxing +thumb up3!

[@thevoiceharmonic]

I have seen both activations of the 2nd spillway. Amazing. New mudstone sediments exposed to the sky for the first time. As with last time, there is a lot of rock debris to be cleared from the river before the pumping station can open up. This time the second spill way - 200m wide - ran at 50cm. 11 years ago it ran at 30cm

[@brentonclarke]

there sure must have been a fair bit of water going over the 2nd spillway and would have been good to be there to see it

[@odettepross2435]

a lot of water ..a little amount if time..hmmm…makes places like the grand canyon look less old

[@hwd71]

My thoughts exactly, God bless you sister.

[@barryrahn5957]

Quite a bit of erosion,eh? Oz' big secret: floods, in addition to wildfires. You guys really got whomped with floods this year!

[@duanetonkin8200]

Thanks

[@koharumi1]

So were both spillways in action at the same time?

[@brentonclarke]

Yes all spillways were flowing over at the same time. The 2nd spillway is one of the emergency spillways for when the water level in the lake is too high for the main concrete spillway to release water quick enough

[@carisi2k11]

The damage to spillway 2 to looks similar to what happened at the oroville dam in california

[@carisi2k11]

That spillway needs a ramp to break up the pressure of the water.

[@brentonclarke]

I guess they will be looking at what they can do to improve things give it has gone over a few times now

[@koharumi1]

Noo damn carp again!

[@brentonclarke]

The positive was a few carp got cleaned up from the lake. But probably ideal conditions for them to breed in large numbers so expect so see a lot more

[@markjmaxwell9819]

A big repair project with some design impovements needed. l would say some gates and a new spillway are needed. Maybe going from a earth to concrete is also required for a larger part of the wall..... Not the first time this has happened they should budget for a billion dollar rebuild.

[@brentonclarke]

I’m guessing it will be just a quick repair job for now to get the road open as any redesign will likely take a lot more time and money

[@markjmaxwell9819]

@@brentonclarke Something will have to be done in the next twelve months. Maybe a series of gates with a new spillway.

[@Lumberjack3446]

@@markjmaxwell9819 I work at a dam that has gates fitted and in situations like Eppalock faced last week they wouldn't have helped but hindered. As it was it reached over 130% capacity without gates which was 80,000+ML extra water being held. An Olympic sized swimming pool is 2ML for comparison. Gated structures are great in low flow situations but take an enormous amount of management and experience to operate effectively at those levels of flow. The cost to redesign and refit Eppalock would be prohibitive with no benefit in this situation.

[@markjmaxwell9819]

Depending on the depth of the wall a similar design to Eildon would be okay. Valves at the bottom of the wall and gates at the top. A few spillways in the US have collapsed and redesigns with more concrete and a more modern way of doing things have been built. Oroville dam in the USA comes to mind. Eppalok was a catastrophic failure.

[@Lumberjack3446]

Oroville cost in excess of $2 billion USD to fix, do you see Dan the man forking out even a quater of that amount (in $oz) to retrofit a dam that isn't really broken. Yes Eppalock has it's issues but at the end of the day it didn't fall over and the emergency spillway did exactly as it was designed to do. Yes the road in front of it washed away but it was always sacrificial, if it wasn't supposed to disappear like it did they would have put more concrete and more permanent structures in place 10 years ago when it all tore out. Maybe this time they will, we'll see how big Dan's cheque book is.

[@reverseuniverse2559]

You often hear of the power of pussie but the power of water as seen @3:30 onward with trees laying fully intact all earth stripped with just bedrock now that’s a Geologists mine field! Fresh never seen unearthed bedrock telling millions of years unearthed

[@brentonclarke]

Haha. The water did a really good job at exposing the bedrock. It was really interesting to see how the different layers had formed and moved over millions of years to end up how it is now

[@number2664]

Dams are scary

[@annettehewitson6426]

Over all the years you think they would of lay concrete,even last time they back fill with rock dirt.engineering no brains.

[@thevoiceharmonic]

It was OK as designed for the first 50 years. It has failed 2 times in 11 years now. This is climate change and the infrastructure has not been built to cope. Building a better second spillway will not stop flooding downstream