Somerset Dam
dam in South East Queensland
The Somerset Dam is a mass concrete gravity dam with a gated spillway across the Stanley River in Queensland, Australia. It is within the locality of Somerset Dam in the Somerset Region in South East Queensland. The main purpose of the dam is the supply of potable water for the Brisbane, Gold Coast and Logan City regions. Additionally, the dam provides for flood mitigation, recreation and for the generation of hydroelectricity. The impounded reservoir is called Lake Somerset.
As early as the 1960s it had become clear that the dam could not meet the water requirements of the region by the 1980s.
The dam, lake and surrounding village of Somerset are named in honour of Henry Plantagenet Somerset, a local grazier and Member of the Legislative Assembly of Queensland who represented the seat of Stanley from 1904 until 1920.
Location and features
The dam is approximately 115 kilometres (71 mi) northwest of Brisbane in the Somerset Region and 80 kilometres (50 mi) north of Ipswich.
The concrete dam structure is 50 metres (160 ft) high and 305 metres (1,001 ft) long. The 203-thousand-cubic-metre (7.2×10^6 cu ft) dam wall holds back the 904,000-megalitre (199×10^9 imp gal; 239×10^9 US gal) reservoir when at full capacity.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Somerset Dam” is dam in South East Queensland. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Somerset, South and East, not as a finished interpretation.
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The phrase “dam in South East Queensland” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.
Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 1, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q47004192. Authority coordinates are -27.114, 152.557. 1 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1904 and 1920.
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This entry incorporates text from “Somerset Dam” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.