Description

Steenbras Lower Dam is located in the mountains above Gordon’s Bay and was completed in 1921. It was the first dam in Cape Town to be built at a remove from Table Mountain. The original Steenbras Water Scheme included an 820 m tunnel through the mountain to Gordon’s Bay and a 64 km cast iron pipe (750 mm in diameter) which linked the dam to the Molteno Reservoir in Oranjezicht. This project proved to be so expensive that the independent municipalities of Cape Town, Claremont, Green Point, Sea Point, Kalk Bay, Maitland, Mowbray,Rondebosch, Woodstock and, at a later stage, Wynberg, combined to form the Greater Cape Town Municipality in order to afford it. Further work included the building of a new, higher dam wall in 1926 and then raising it still higher in 1954. A second (1926) and third (1949) pipeline to Newlands Reservoir were also constructed.

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