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Location of catchments

Melbourne’s water has traditionally been supplied by forest water catchments to the north east of the city.

These include the Thomson Dam, Maroondah Dam, and the O’Shannassy,  Sugarloaf and Cardinia Reservoirs.

These catchments have supply about 500 Giga litre per annum.

Almost half of these catchment areas are State forest, which can be logged.  (See the second map below.)

(1GL = 1000ML = one billion litres)

(Click on map below to enlarge)

The principle water authority, Melbourne Water, has created a perception that most of Melbourne’s water supply comes from closed catchments protected within National Parks.

This is not the truth.

Almost half of Melbourne’s domestic water supply catchments are State Forest where logging can occur as shown in the map and table below.

(Click map to enlarge.)

Other areas

For a long, detailed report on logging in the Goulburn Broken catchment see a report by the Australian Conservation Foundation.  MWCN is unaware of what work ACF is doing on this issue.

Google Earth Overlays

On this page download Melbourne catchment overlays for use in Google Earth.