Lesotho Highlands Water Project, 1991-2003
What does the under-developed but rainy Kingdom of Lesotho have to do with
the industrial region around Johannesburg? It provides water to the region nearly
200 miles away! Planning work therefore started right back in the 1980s on the
Lesotho Highlands Water Project, on which HOCHTIEF is a partner in an international
consortium.
The aim is to redirect water from Lesotho's rivers against their natural direction of flow
and send it to Johannesburg. One first step was to build the Katse Dam, 6,500 feet
above sea level. It has a curved dam wall nearly 600 feet high and 2,300 feet along its
crown.
The dam was finished back in 1996. By then HOCHTIEF was already busy building a system
of tunnels to carry the water. One section of this was a gallery 13½ miles long for which
a tunnel-drilling machine was specially developed.
Other sub-projects for which HOCHTIEF took on coordinating responsibility were a dam
across the Matsoku River and the 20-mile long Mohale tunnel. The first of these
sub-projects reached completion in 2001, the other will do so in 2003. The Lesotho Highlands
Water Project as a whole will take until 2020, but then Johannesburg will have enough water
and Lesotho will have a lucrative source of income.
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