The Department of Water and Sanitation’s (DWS) Minister – Pemmy Majodina – has commissioned Hazelmere Dam, located in the Mdloti River in KwaZulu-Natal.

Hazelmere Dam’s wall was raised by seven metres (from 86 m to 93 m) to increase capacity of storage and to augment the water supply to areas such as Verulam, Groutville, Blythedale and Ballito.

The project scope of the work included the construction of retrofitting a Piano Key Weir (PKW) onto an existing dam spillway structure, the installation of 83 rock anchors as well as foundation grouting and other minor related works.

“The Hazelmere Dam can now be measured against world class standards due the type of spillway selection, technology and innovation used in implementing the project,” said Minister Majodina.

The dam has an uncontrolled PKW spillway, this was done to ensure that the dam wall withstands extreme concentration of floods of between six and eight hours for the dam catchment area.

Some of the employed technologies undertaken to upgrade the dam wall included the world’s highest Piano Key Weir, world’s largest anchors were installed to improve stability of the concrete gravity dam wall structure, and the largest capacity post-tensioning stressing jacks were deployed during construction.

Some of the technologies also employed included the use of innovative data management software for real-time monitoring of anchor performance and 3D digital crack metres.