Darwin River Dam supply interruption

9 March 2026

Darwin River Dam stopped operating at 4.30pm today due to substantial flooding of the pump station and associated equipment.

The Darwin River Dam spillway has been overflowing since the new year due to a heavy wet season. Today’s flash flooding and further rain pushed the dam to more than 110% capacity. Combined with the additional rain, this caused the flooding.

The Darwin River Dam wall has not been impacted by this event.

This is an unprecedented situation and we have never seen this volume of water in the dam before. Our priority is to restore the pump station and associated equipment as quickly as is safely possible and we are investigating operating the dam with generators.

While we work on fixing the dam, we’re asking Darwin residents to reduce their water use.

Simple steps such as shorter showers, turning off your taps and switching off your irrigation can all help.

To help partially meet demand, we will be activating borefields at McMinns and Howard East. But they cannot meet the full shortfall of the dam being offline.

So we are asking Darwin residents to please reduce the amount of water you use.

We have a team of experts working to fix the dam as quickly as is safely possible and thank Territorians for pulling together.

Media contact: 0497 904 810 / media@powerwater.com.au