It is 40 years (1968-2008) since the completion of the building of Coolmunda, and a lot of water has passed under the bridge in that time!

To celebrate the Inglewood and District Historical Society Inc is holding a Dinner Dance at the Inglewood Civic Centre on Friday July 25.

On the Saturday morning, the Inglewood Heritage Centre will be open for morning tea at 10a.m followed by the unveiling of a new historical display depicting the construction days of Coolmunda, beginning in 1963.

The dam was built to provide an assured supply of irrigation water in

the Macintyre Brook with a potential irrigation area of 8000 acres (3250 ha).

Farmers at the time were being forced out of the tobacco industry

and this dam provided the opportunity to convert to other irrigated

crops such as lucerne, fodder, irrigated pastures, horticultural crops

such as apricots and grapes.

The construction of Coolmunda Dam incorporated a number of innovative features such as the ELSE (Edelisia Lavori Sottosuolo Estrazioni, as named by its Italian inventors), where a trench, 76m wide and up to 16m deep was dug across the alluvial right bank, filled with bentonite clay and then replaced with a mixture of clay and cement to form an

impermeable cut-off to prevent seepage of water through the gravel

layers underlying the bank.

This cut-off extends horizontally across the stream bed and the right bank for a total distance of 873m. The dam features seven counter balanced radial gates which operate automatically.

This project was completed at a cost of $6 900 000. The dam holds

65000ML when full to capacity.

For agriculture in the Macintyre Brook irrigation area, the high

reliability of the dam has given farmers the confidence to make long

term investments in irrigated agriculture. There are very few years in its history that Coolmunda Dam has not reached its full capacity and this is due to the high yielding catchment area. Such a highly reliable water supply system has attracted many new and innovative industries to the Inglewood area and is worth celebrating.