Ross River Dam is 69.3% full (160.6 GL of 231.7 GL), down 0.8 points in a week; a year ago it was 78.8% full.
3 storages reporting to the Bureau of Meteorology, latest reading 2026-09-27 11:05. Refreshed every 30 minutes.
Three storages stand behind Townsville’s water, and each has a row here: Ross River Dam and Paluma Dam, both run by Townsville City Council, and Sunwater’s Burdekin Falls Dam, whose water can be pumped to the city through the Haughton pipeline. The headline figure follows the council’s own practice and reads Ross River Dam alone, the storage whose level sets the city’s restriction triggers; below the table are how the supply works, what a reading over 100 per cent means at Ross River Dam and where each dam can be fished.
Percentage full is the Bureau’s accessible volume divided by the accessible capacity, as on its storage dashboard, so it can differ by a point or two from the operator’s daily report, which is the official figure. Year ago is the same storage on the same date last year. Dams with a fishing page link to it.
| Storage | Full | Volume (ML) | Capacity (ML) | 7 days | Year ago | Updated | Fishing |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Burdekin Falls DamSunwater | 87.0% | 1,610,951 | 1,852,140 | −1.1 pts | — | 27 Sept | Burdekin Falls Dam fishing report |
| Ross River DamTownsville City Council | 69.3% | 160,597 | 231,729 | −0.8 pts | 78.8% | 26 Sept | Ross River Dam fishing report |
| Paluma DamTownsville City Council | 74.3% | 8,485 | 11,416 | −0.8 pts | — | 26 Sept | — |
No storage of 5 GL or more rose by more than 0.1 points.
90% and over60–90%30–60%under 30%no capacity published
Combined accessible volume of the 1 storages with a published capacity, as a percentage of their combined capacity, one value a day.
Townsville City Council describes Ross River Dam and Paluma Dam as the city’s two primary water sources. Its dam levels page treats them one by one, giving Ross River Dam a capacity of 233,187 megalitres and Paluma Dam 11,400 megalitres, and adds a single line about the third source: the council is not currently pumping from the Burdekin Dam. The council’s pages give each storage its own figures rather than a single percentage for the city, and its Water Restriction Policy measures the supply-security triggers against the level of Ross River Dam. That is why the headline on this page reads Ross River Dam on its own, with Paluma and Burdekin Falls alongside for context. The Bureau reports Ross River Dam against 231,729 megalitres of accessible capacity. The 1,458 megalitre difference from the council’s capacity is the same volume the council’s level diagram places below the top of the lowest intake pipe, so the two percentages sit only a few tenths of a point apart. Paluma is less tidy: the council’s history of the dam says new spillway flashboards raised its capacity to 11,830 megalitres in 2020, the dam levels page still shows 11,400, and the Bureau works from 11,416.
The council’s fact sheet calls Ross River Dam the major source of supply for the city. It stands at Kelso, where Five Head Creek meets the Ross River, and water from its pump station runs by gravity to the Douglas Water Treatment Plant on Angus Smith Drive, which the council’s 2024–25 drinking water report lists with conventional treatment and chlorine disinfection. Paluma Dam works another way. It was built on Swamp Creek in 1957 and 1958 as part of the Mount Spec supply, to add to the natural runoff of Crystal Creek: a pipeline of roughly four kilometres releases dam water into the creek, the creek carries it down to the Crystal Creek Intake, and the Mount Spec pipeline takes it on to the Northern Water Treatment Plant at Kinduro for ultrafiltration. The same report counts 40,645 megalitres of drinking water produced in 2024–25 for about 204,541 residents. It also covers two small schemes outside the city system: Paluma township, served from Paluma Weir by its own plant, and Cungulla, served from the Haughton River through the Giru plant. The council also lists three weirs on its dam levels page, Black’s, Gleeson’s and Aplin’s, with Black’s Weir holding 3,780 megalitres.
Sunwater’s Burdekin Haughton Water Supply Scheme draws on Burdekin Falls Dam and works together with Clare Weir and Gorge Weir on the Burdekin River and with Val Bird and Giru weirs on the Haughton River. Pump stations on Clare Weir lift water into main channels on both banks, and the scheme names urban supply for Townsville and Thuringowa among its purposes. The Bureau’s 2015 water account records that a pumping station and pipeline from the Haughton Balancing Storage to the headwaters of Ross River Dam were finished in 1988, and the council’s drinking water report describes Ross River Dam as supplemented from the Burdekin through the Haughton Pipeline when required. Burdekin water therefore reaches Townsville by topping up Ross River Dam, and the council regards it as an emergency option because pumping is costly. The Haughton Pipeline Project is enlarging that link. Stage 1 duplicated and enlarged the existing Haughton River pipeline; Stage 2 runs along a 28.5 kilometre alignment to the Burdekin River, giving about 60 kilometres of pipe in total, and the council says the current pipeline meets the city’s needs until 2032. In a statement on 16 June 2026 the mayor said the pump station had been redesigned away from the river as the Burdekin Pump Station, drawing from Sunwater’s irrigation system with a new Powerlink substation, and that pipeline construction should be finished by 2027–28, subject to funding. Stage 2 funding approved so far is A$195 million from the Queensland Government and A$85 million from the council, and the council says more will be needed.
Townsville is never entirely free of watering rules. The council says restrictions have applied since 1996 and that it keeps a permanent low level as part of its demand strategy. On 28 September 2026 its water updates page listed permanent water conservation measures as current: sprinklers only between 5 pm and 8 am, Tuesday to Sunday, with even-numbered properties on Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday, odd-numbered properties on Wednesday, Friday and Sunday, and no sprinkler watering on Mondays. The Water Restriction Policy, last reviewed on 20 November 2024, sets five levels above those measures. Its supply-security triggers for the city are Ross River Dam levels of 50 per cent for Low, 30 for Medium, 20 for High and 10 for Critical, with target demand stepping down from 165 to 85 megalitres a day; the Emergency level is kept for situations such as a critical asset failure. Under Low and Medium, sprinklers are limited to 5 to 7 am and 6 to 8 pm. High allows only handheld watering in two one-hour windows, and Critical only watering cans and buckets. The General Manager Water Services declares a change having regard to these triggers among other factors, and the policy also allows restrictions when treatment cannot meet demand or when raw water quality changes, blue-green algae being one of the examples it gives.
Ross River Dam was investigated after floods in 1890, 1927, 1946 and 1953 as a dam for both flood attenuation and urban supply, and the council still operates it for both. Full supply level, which the council equates with 100 per cent, is RL 38.55 metres. Water held above it is treated as floodwater: three steel radial gates, each 5.3 metres high and installed in the 2006–08 upgrade, open to a degree set by how far the lake has risen, balancing the safety of the dam against flooding downstream. The council’s level diagram puts the fixed concrete spillway crest at RL 34.66, about 31 per cent, and the top of the embankment at RL 48.00, where the dam would hold 1,200,000 megalitres, or 514 per cent. The flood of record, in February 2019, reached RL 43.00, about 249 per cent; on 3 February that year the council recorded a peak inflow of 4,900 cubic metres a second and a peak spillway outflow of 1,900. A Ross River Dam row well above 100 per cent during the wet season, when the Bureau says flooding on the Ross is concentrated (October to April), therefore shows floodwater being held and passed downstream, not extra drinking water. Both council dams have an Emergency Action Plan approved by the Queensland Government, with four stages of notice to people downstream: Alert, Lean Forward, Stand Up and Stand Down.
The rules differ at each dam. At Ross River Dam the council permits land-based fishing only in its designated area, an outcrop reaching into the lake from the dam wall, from 6 am to 6 pm every day between March and November, and its maps also mark a fishing exclusion zone. Its access rules now read catch and release only: fish, red claw and mussels from the dam should not be eaten, because the high blue-green algae levels can cause illness, including hepatoenteritis. Swimming, camping, fires and dogs in the fishing area, other than assistance dogs, are banned. The council updates the algae alert level for the dam every Friday, and its 2024–25 water quality report says it is reviewing concepts for on-water fishing and water skiing as later stages. No permit is needed there, since the dam is absent from the state’s Stocked Impoundment Permit Scheme waters in the list dated 1 July 2026. Lake Paluma is closed to fishing, because the council protects all plants and animals there; swimming, non-motorised boating and camping at its 23 bookable sites are allowed. Burdekin Falls Dam does need a permit: that list includes it, with barramundi as its stocked species. Sunwater allows fishing and boating on Lake Dalrymple but not onshore fishing on or near the wall, keeps boats at least 200 metres from the wall behind a buoy line, and shuts the ramp at very high or low lake levels.
The Ross River Dam row at the top of this page shows the latest reading from Townsville City Council’s gauge, Bureau station 9573, with the date of the reading. Its percentage uses the Bureau’s accessible capacity of 231,729 megalitres, so it can differ by a few tenths of a point from the council’s own figure, which also counts the 1,458 megalitres below the lowest intake.
Mainly from Ross River Dam, treated at the Douglas plant, and from Paluma Dam and Crystal Creek, treated at the Northern plant at Kinduro. Water from Sunwater’s Burdekin Haughton scheme can be pumped into Ross River Dam when required, but the council treats this as an emergency option and says it is not currently pumping from the Burdekin.
Only the permanent water conservation measures applied on 28 September 2026: sprinklers from 5 pm to 8 am, Tuesday to Sunday, on the odds and evens days, and none on Mondays. The first restriction trigger in the council’s policy is Ross River Dam falling to 50 per cent.
Because it is also a flood mitigation dam. Water above full supply level is stored for a time as floodwater and released through three radial gates on the spillway; in the 2019 flood the lake reached about 249 per cent on the council’s level diagram.
Ross River Dam, yes, from the council’s designated land-based area during its hours, catch and release only. Lake Paluma, no: the council does not permit fishing. Burdekin Falls Dam, yes, from a boat or from the shore away from the wall, with a Stocked Impoundment Permit.
Data: Bureau of Meteorology, Water Data Online and the Australian Water Storages dataset, © Commonwealth of Australia, CC BY; volumes supplied by © Sunwater, © Townsville City Council. Where the Bureau lists no capacity, or its capacity and volume are on different bases, a row shows the volume only. Text by Pablo Ruiz Quintero.
The facts on this page were checked against these pages, from the agencies, park services and operators that manage the water on 28 September 2026; anything we could not verify was taken out. Written by Pablo Ruiz Quintero. Errors are published in the verification log.