ACT and Queanbeyan’s water supply system
Canberra's water supply profile
Rainfall goes through four main stages before it reaches your tap.
- Collection – through river catchments
- Storage – water eventually makes its way to our dams, which store water before it gets treated
- Sanitisation and treatment – through water treatment plants
- Distribution – water gets transported to service reservoirs before getting distributed via pumping stations and water mains
A water catchment is a large, protected area of land which catches and collects water to be harvest for use. We have two catchments – the Cotter River catchment and the Queanbeyan River catchment. Learn more about our river catchments.
We store our water for treatment through four dams – Cotter, Corin, Bendora and Googong. Altogether, our dams have the capacity to store 207,379 million litres of water. Learn more about our dams.
There are 45 service reservoirs in our water supply system. Water from the treatment plants is delivered by gravity fed bulk supply mains to these service reservoirs, before water is distributed through a network of reticulated pipes. Learn more about the water distribution process.