Cressbrook Dam is one of the three water storages used to supply

Toowoomba Toowoomba ( ), nicknamed 'The Garden City' and 'T-Bar', is a city on the border of South East Queensland and Darling Downs regions of Queensland, Australia. It is located west of Queensland's capital, Brisbane. The urban population of Toowoom ...

and the surrounding region in

Queensland Queensland ( , commonly abbreviated as Qld) is a States and territories of Australia, state in northeastern Australia, and is the second-largest and third-most populous state in Australia. It is bordered by the Northern Territory, South Austr ...

, Australia. The dam is north-east of

in the locality of Biarra in the

Somerset Region The Somerset Region is a local government area located in the West Moreton region of South East Queensland, Australia, northwest of the City of Brisbane. The region is centred on the town of Esk, which also serves as the council seat. Somer ...

. It was constructed in 1983 for the former

Toowoomba City Council The City of Toowoomba was a local government area on the border of Darling Downs and South East Queensland regions of Queensland, Australia, encompassing the centre and inner suburbs of the regional city of Toowoomba. The City covered an area ...

(now the

Toowoomba Regional Council The Toowoomba Region is a local government area (LGA) on the border of Darling Downs and South East Queensland regions of Queensland, Australia. Established in 2008, the LGA was preceded by several other local government authorities with histo ...

). The other two storages used for Toowoomba are

Perseverance Dam Perseverance Creek Dam (also known as Perseverance Dam) is a reservoir in Crows Nest, Queensland, Crows Nest, Toowoomba Region, Queensland, Australia. It creates Lake Perseverance which is the second largest (in terms of storage capacity) and the ...

and

Cooby Dam The Cooby Dam is a rockfill embankment dam with an ungated spillway across the Cooby Creek, a tributary of Condamine River, at Groomsville in the Toowoomba Region on the Darling Downs, Queensland, Australia. The main purpose of the dam is fo ...

. The dam impounds Cressbrook Creek to create Lake Cressbrook, which has a surface area of 517 hectares with a total capacity of 81,800 mega-litres when full (78,700 ML usable) at an average depth of 15.8 metres. The lake is considered for a 400 MW / 4 GWh (10-hour)

pumped-storage hydroelectricity Pumped-storage hydroelectricity (PSH), or pumped hydroelectric energy storage (PHES), is a type of hydroelectric energy storage used by electric power systems for load balancing (electrical power), load balancing. A PSH system stores energy i ...

project. The catchment also contains

, which is located 10 km upstream of Cressbrook Dam.

Fishing

A ''Stocked Impoundment Permit'' is required to fish in the dam.Fishing in Queensland dams? You may need a permit.

References

{{WaterQueensland , state=autocollapse Reservoirs in Queensland Dams completed in 1983 Darling Downs Dams in Queensland Dams in the Murray River basin 1983 establishments in Australia