ABSTRACT
In South Africa, dams are the backbone of municipal water supply. In an idealised world, if river flow could be perfectly constant and the demand for water could stay perfectly even, there would be no need for storage. Dams are potentially the most dangerous structures built by humans. The potential energy commanded by millions of tonnes of water impounded to great height behind a dam wall is enormous. In the event of failure, the rapid release of this energy in a short time will mostly have catastrophic consequences. Bathymetry has to do with the shape of the underwater world of lakes and oceans. For hydrologists, bathymetry more specifically describes the shape of the water volumes stored in our freshwater supply dams. Pumped storage, in practical terms, requires two dams at different levels, connected by large pipes or tunnels, equipped with electro-mechanical equipment which could act both as pumps and turbines.
