The Kouga Dam(known as Paul Sauer Dam prior to 1995) supplies irrigations water to the Kouga and Gamtoos valleys as well as drinking water to the Port Elizabeth metropolitan area via the Lourie, South Africa balancing dam.
The dam is a double curvature arch dam 82 m high with a storage capacity of 128,7 million m3. Provision was made in the design to allow for a future raising of the water level by some 15,2 m. The construction of the wall marked the beginning of an era of double curvature arch dams in South Africa. Besides the normal central overspill section, flood-control sluice gates with chute spillways were provided on the left flank
The dam has a catchment area of 388700 ha. The length of the dam basin is approximately 34 km and the surface area of the impoundment at full storage capacity is 555 ha. Geologically, the gorge within which the dam is located, comprises strata of the Table Mountain sandstone series in which layers of shale and tillite are included. As the quality of the foundation material was not very good, extensive measures for safeguarding the dam structure and its foundations were required.
These measures included the construction of a series of tunnels in the right flank, from which a system of drainage and grout holes were drilled to prevent the development of high uplift water pressures in the rock flank.
