WaterNSW to continue to release water from Lake Keepit as capacity sits at 98.7 per cent

Gunnedah sits downstream of the dam and has already had a flood sweep through over the weekend.

Less than a third of the water that submerged low-lying parts of the town flowed from Lake Keepit, a WaterNSW spokesperson told the Leader.

The spokesperson said that as the flood peak flowed through Gunnedah, modelling by the water authority revealed about 70 per cent of the water came from the natural downstream tributaries.

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The dam level had been reduced to 96.6 per cent before Thursday last week ahead of the "larger-than-forecast" rain event that came through.

The releases did not exceed 30,000ML a day - about 12,000 Olympic swimming pools worth of water - even when about 45,000ML a day was surging in, the spokesperson said.

While the flow from Lake Keepit has been stemmed somewhat now, extra storage space still needs to be made to capture inflows from rain expected on Wednesday, the WaterNSW spokesperson said.

"Keepit Dam releases helped mitigate flood impacts by holding back large volumes of water from flooding downstream tributaries such as the Peel and Mooki Rivers," they said.

"WaterNSW is working closely with the [Bureau of Meteorology] to monitor weather and flood forecasts and inflow projections to its dams."

Water releases were also made from Copeton Dam before last week's rain.

Keepit Dam was 98.5 per cent full on Monday afternoon, Chaffey Dam was sitting at 101.2 per cent and Split Rock Dam is 91.2 per cent full.

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