Great Prospect History #5 Traditional Cache
Great Prospect History #5
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Difficulty:
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Terrain:
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Size: 
(micro)
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This cache has been placed on near the road, be very stealth please.
fairly easy, great for the kids and new local cachers alike.
Prospect Reservoir was the centrepiece of the Upper Nepean Scheme to secure Sydney’s water supply, devised by Edward Orpen Moriarty, engineer-in-chief of the harbours and rivers branch of the Public Works Department. The Upper Nepean catchment south of Sydney is in one of the highest rainfall zones on the mid-NSW coast, and the area’s rivers, located in narrow gorges, provided ideal dam sites. As early as 1888, two weirs on the Cataract, and Nepean rivers captured this rainfall as part of the Upper Nepean Scheme to supply Sydney’s growing water needs. A series of tunnels, canals and aqueducts – known as the Upper Canal – fed the water by gravity 64 kilometres to Prospect Reservoir. From there, water was fed by gravity along the 7.7 kilometre Lower Canal to a basin at Guildford and then water was piped to several reservoirs around the city. The Upper Nepean Scheme provided only temporary relief, and the 1901 - 1902 drought brought Sydney perilously close to a complete water famine. After two Royal Commissions, authorities agreed that a dam should be built on the Cataract River. The successive building of Cataract, Cordeaux, Avon and Nepean dams between 1902 and 1935 greatly increased the Upper Nepean Scheme’s capacity. Capacity increased again in May 1940 when water from the Warragamba Emergency Scheme first reached Prospect Reservoir. The water was piped across Megarrity's Creek Bridge at Warragamba, and 26 kilometres to Prospect Reservoir. When Warragamba Dam was completed in 1960, Prospect Reservoir continued to play an important role in storing Sydney's water supply. A second pipeline, linking Warragamba Dam and Prospect Reservoir was completed in 1966, significantly increasing the volume of water that could be transferred during peak demand periods. When the Prospect water filtration plant was commissioned in 1996, raw water from Warragamba and the Upper Nepean dams was sent directly to the treatment facility, bypassing Prospect Reservoir. However, the reservoir remains an integral part of Sydney's drinking water supply and is used regularly in times of high demand for water and when other parts of the water supply system are taken offline for maintenance. The filtration plant at Prospect can also draw water directly from Prospect Reservoir, providing greater flexibility in sourcing the best quality water.
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