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The La Gogue dam is back in operation after a five-year shutdown for rehabilitation work and has a storage capacity of 1.6 million m3. The dam, which was reopened by Seychelles Head of State Wavel Ramkalawan.
After 39 years in service (1979 – 2018), the La Gogue dam is getting a facelift to meet the ever-increasing demand for drinking water in the Seychelles archipelago. The rehabilitation work involved raising the dam of the reservoir by 6 m, using an artificial waterproofing system consisting of a polyvinyl chloride (PVC) membrane-anchored in a trench dug in the existing core. Sinohydro Corporation and Engineering of China, the project owner, also carried out work on the southern saddle dam and piling work on the right abutment of the dam, to remedy seepage through the structure of the main dam.
The La Gogue dam is now 35 m high, compared with 29 m before the works. Its storage capacity has increased by 60%, from 600,000 m3 to 1.6 million m3. The water pumped into the La Gogue dam reservoir will be treated before being distributed to households. The Public Utilities Corporation (PUC), which managed the project, is talking about supplying drinking water to thousands more Seychellois. By 2019, the rate of access to a basic source of drinking water in the East African country had already reached 97%, according to the World Bank.
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The future drinking water plant will be built downstream of the reservoir. The PUC estimates that the plant will have a production capacity of 4,400 m3 of drinking water per day when it comes on stream. The plant will supply Mahé, the largest island in the Seychelles archipelago. The cost of rehabilitating the La Gogue dam was $20 million, financed by the Seychelles government thanks to a loan from the African Development Bank (AfDB).
