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Warragamba Dam

Warragamba Dam is the largest concrete dam in Australia and one of the largest domestic water supply dams in the world.

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Warragamba NSW

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Warragamba Dam

Warragamba Dam is the largest concrete dam in the country and is best known for the creation of Lake Burragorang – the two constituting the primary sources for water supply in Sydney . The dam was built between 1948 and 1960, with a capacity of 2031 gigalitres within the lake’s 75 square kilometres.

To put this in perspective, the dam is about four times the size of Sydney Harbour .

Warragamba Dam, Visitor Centre, Facts, Map History, Lookout & Location

In 1999, the dam was closed for key upgrades that spanned a decade after which it was opened to the general public. There are lots of attractions at the Warragamba Dam, making this a perfect place to visit when out of town.

Start by visiting the information centre where you get to learn about the history of the dam, as well as its significance against the background of Sydney’s stability. This is a must-visit because it gives visitors a glimpse into the difficult work of constructing the dam, alongside some of the challenges the dam workers faced.

Peer into future advancements and prospects when you visit The ‘Water for life’ exhibition held on location.

In addition to the interactive visitor centre, Warragamba Dam is also home to an array of facilities for a perfect outdoor getaway. These include picnic areas, drinking water, BBQs and washrooms. A trip to the dam is incomplete without enjoying the magnificent views while on the platforms. Take the 40-minute drive from the dam to Burragorang Lookout, which promises excellent a panoramic view.

Note that pedestrian access to the dam wall is available only on select days. The dam remains open from 8am to 5pm daily.

Note that pets are not allowed, and all water activities are prohibited. The visitor centre’s opening hours are from 10am to 4pm every day; except on Christmas Day and Good Friday. Entry is free for all.

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Warragamba Dam

Warragamba Dam is the largest concrete dam in Australia and one of the largest domestic water supply dams in the world. Lake Burragorang, which is formed behind Warragamba Dam, is around four times the size of Sydney Harbour. To build the dam, three million tonnes of concrete were placed across the Warragamba River in a series of large, interlocking blocks.

The dam grounds reopened to the public in 2009 after a 10-year closure for major dam upgrades. The grounds include a new visitor centre, Water for Life exhibition, viewing platforms and upgraded visitor facilities.

Facilities include picnic shelters, electric barbecues, drinking water, toilets, disabled toilets and viewing areas. No wood, charcoal or solid fuel barbecues can be used. Portable gas barbecues are permitted except during total fire bans.

Accessibility

Disabled access available, contact operator for details.

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NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service

Burragorang State Conservation Area

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Burragorang State Conservation Area accounts for 80 per cent of Sydney’s water supply. The picnic area and lookout have excellent facilities, including barbecues.

Read more about Burragorang State Conservation Area

For the most part, Burragorang State Conservation Area is water – clean, precious water that supplies about 80 per cent of Sydney’s supply. Virtually its only publicly-accessible point is Burragorang lookout and picnic area, but it is certainly a sight for weary, city-smogged eyes. Vast expanses of water formed by Warragamba Dam catchment area are surrounded by areas of thick bushland.

Ancient lands of the D’harawal and Gundangarra people, the land became important for European settlers as a coal-mining region and to a lesser extent, a source of lead and silver, from the 1820s to the 1960s. When Sydney’s population began rapidly expanding, Warragamba River was dammed to create a lake, and most of these mining townships were lost beneath its surface.

These days, the park covers more than 17,500ha and is home to a number of threatened species of wildlife, including koalas, tiger quolls and the powerful owl. The best way to enjoy Burragorang is to pack a picnic and take your binoculars to the lookout, where you can see for miles around. You might also want to take your bike in the car because the sealed roads are excellent for cycling.

Highlights in this park

Burragorang lookout and picnic area

Burragorang lookout and picnic area is a great day trip from Camden, Campbelltown and Sydney. Enjoy a picnic lunch with stunning views of Warragamba D...

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In this park:

Things to do (2).

• Birdwatching and wildlife encounters (2)
• Other experiences (1)
• Picnics and barbecues (1)
• Road trips and car/bus tours (1)
• Sightseeing (2)
• Walking (1)

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Warragamba Dam

Top ways to experience nearby attractions

Most Recent: Reviews ordered by most recent publish date in descending order.

Detailed Reviews: Reviews ordered by recency and descriptiveness of user-identified themes such as waiting time, length of visit, general tips, and location information.

Warragamba Dam - All You MUST Know BEFORE You Go (2024)

• (5.39 km) Mulgoa Valley Guesthouse
• (5.43 km) “Six Oaks” Wilderness Retreat
• (4.74 km) Wallacia Hotel
• (15.04 km) Quality Inn Penrith
• (15.76 km) Gateway Lifestyle Nepean Shores
• (0.45 km) Dam Break Cafe
• (0.44 km) Curry muncher
• (0.53 km) Pietro Pizzeria Restaurant
• (0.48 km) Spillway Bistro
• (14.69 km) Montes
• (0.65 km) Warragamba Hobby Hut
• (10.74 km) Blue Mountains Tours
• (15.39 km) Balloon Aloft Camden
• (15.14 km) Nepean Belle Paddlewheeler
• (15.92 km) Throw Axe

WARRAGAMBA DAM WALL OPEN FOR PUBLIC ACCESS!

Access to mid terrace level and part of the Dam wall on weekends and public holidays. The picnic grounds, visitor centre and viewing platforms will still be open during the week.

Entry to Haviland Park and the Dam is FREE!

DAM FEST - 15th October 2017

https://www.damfest.org.au/

All information on this page is taken from the WaterNSW Website, who operate Warragamba Dam.  For more information their website is  http://www.waternsw.com.au/supply/visit/warragamba-dam

Visit the Dam

Look out at Warragamba Dam and see the past and future of Sydney's water supply. Marvel at this engineering masterpiece as it nestles quietly in native bushland. Delve into the history of the dam builders who laboured to create one of the world's largest domestic water supply dams. Look into the future at the interactive 'Water for Life' exhibition. Just a 30 minute drive from Penrith, or one hour from Sydney's CBD, bring the family and escape the everyday at Warragamba Dam.

Lookout points

View at the visitor centre.

There are three viewing platforms at the Warragamba Dam Visitor Centre which offer excellent vistas of the upstream dam wall and Lake Burragorang.

Warragamba Dam Wall

Pedestrian access to parts of Warragamba Dam wall is available on weekends and public holidays ONLY between 10am and 4pm , except Christmas Day and Good Friday. 

A mobility bus will be available on the 1st Sunday of every month and public holidays (except Christmas Day and Good Friday).

Eighteenth Street Warragamba

A few minutes drive from the dam through the Warragamba township, the Eighteenth Street Lookout provides a view of the auxiliary spillway and a distant view of Warragamba Dam wall. Open daily from 10am to 5pm. Please note the Eighteenth Street Viewing Platform is currently closed due to the identification of Asbestos Containing Material on the adjoining land. The viewing platform will need to remain closed until further notice while the appropriate cleanup and remediation process is undertaken. 

Burragorang Lookout

Take a 40 minute drive from Warragamba Dam to  Burragorang Lookout , managed by National Parks and Wildlife Service, the lookout offers panoramic views of Lake Burragorang.

Opening hours

Dam grounds

8am to 5pm daily Extended hours, 8am to 6pm, on weekends and public holidays during daylight saving time Entry is free No entry is permitted 15 minutes prior to closing time

Visitor Centre

10am to 4pm daily Closed on Christmas Day and Good Friday Entry is free

VIEW IN MAPS

Warragamba Dam is about 65 kilometres, or a one hour drive, west of the Sydney CBD.

Travelling west on the Western Motorway (M4):

Turn left onto the Northern Road and travel to Wallacia

Take Silverdale Road and Production Avenue to Warragamba Dam.

Driving from the southern suburbs and Campbelltown:

Take the Northern Road

Turn left onto Park Road, Luddenham and travel to Wallacia

Travelling east on the Western Motorway (M4):

Take Mulgoa Road and travel to Wallacia

Tuesday, 17th February 2015

ICONIC WARRAGAMBA DAM WALL TO RE-OPEN FOR

PUBLIC ACCESS FROM MARCH

Member for Wollondilly Jai Rowell MP and Minister for Natural Resources, Lands and Water Kevin Humphries today announced parts of the Warragamba Dam wall are set to reopen to the public on weekends and public holidays, after being off-limits for over 17 years.

“Warragamba Dam was closed to the public in 1998 when construction began on a series of major upgrades and since that time there has been considerable public interest in accessing the dam wall.

“Works are now underway to allow visitors to walk along a section of the Warragamba dam wall on weekends and public holidays (except Good Friday and Christmas Day) with access to be allowed from mid-March.”

“I am very pleased to announce that from mid-March, people will once again be given the chance to walk along a section of Warragamba Dam wall and enjoy the sweeping views of beautiful Lake Burragorang,” Mr Rowell said.

“Warragamba Dam has long been a popular tourist destination and access to the dam wall will further enhance the visitor experience.

Mr Humphries said that when the dam wall reopens, visitors will also be able to access a terraced area below the dam to see a close view of the downstream face of the dam wall.

“The views from the terraced area adjacent to the dam, offer the chance for visitors to gain a better understanding of the scale of this magnificent piece of infrastructure,” he said.

“Warragamba is an easy drive from Sydney and is an ideal location for a family picnic and for sightseeing.

“About 100,000 people visit Warragamba Dam each year – taking advantage of the fantastic picnic facilities and breathtaking views from around the Warragamba Dam Visitor Centre.

“Providing greater public access to the Warragamba Dam wall will give people yet another reason to spend the day in this fantastic part of western Sydney.”

Visitors to the dam during the week are still be able to enjoy spectacular views of the dam from viewing platforms on the site, as well as the interactive Water for Life exhibition at the Warragamba Dam Visitor Centre.

Warragamba Dam Spilling 2013

Copyright Christine Maude 2013

Sydney's Warragamba Dam spills after deluge dumps more than 100mm of rain. What happens now?

Warragamba Dam has reached its capacity and is spilling after heavy rainfall across Sydney.

It's a far cry from the warnings Sydneysiders were receiving late last year, when they were told to prepare for water restrictions by the end of 2024 amid concerns rainfall could reach historic lows during the El Niño weather pattern.

On Friday, WaterNSW said the dam level was above 96 per cent and it would only take another 90 millimetres of rain to fill.

The catchment, which covers some 9,000 square kilometres, received more than that overnight.

After intense rainfall and thunderstorms, some parts received more than 100mm in less than six hours, while 130mm fell closer to the dam wall.

"In places like the Nattai we've received almost 200mm in 24 hours — that resulted in what can only be described as flash flooding type conditions over a very large area," WaterNSW CEO Andrew George said.

This is what's happening with the dam and the effects of it overflowing.

What happens when the dam spills?

The dam itself does not overflow, but reaches a trigger point for gates to automatically open and release small amounts to keep the level just below 100 per cent.

Currently, 138 gigalitres per day are being released, with projections this could rise to about 300 gigalitres per day.

"We're expecting that peak to occur around midnight tonight," Mr George said.

"But we think it will then recede rather quickly halving by midnight, Sunday night and then reducing to more manageable levels by Tuesday."

Since the dam was built in 1960, it has spilled more than 50 times.

During the floods of 2021, it was spilling the volume of Sydney Harbour each day.

Communities downstream should definitely be prepared for further flooding, exacerbated by the increased flows caused by the spills.

Flows come all the way from the Wollondilly River in the state's south and the Coxs River in the west.

Below Warragamba Dam and past the highly populated areas of Richmond and Windsor, floodwaters from five major tributaries all meet, flowing into an extremely narrow choke-point where the river essentially turns back on itself.

This causes the water to back up and quickly rise, causing elevated water levels across the flood plain.

"We're also seeing continued spillage from Tallowa Dam on the Shoalhaven River and the Blue Mountains dams," Mr George said.

"We're also expecting three other metropolitan dams to spill today — Woronora Dam, Cataract Dam and Nepean Dam."

Why wasn't water released before the deluge?

Put simply, that's not allowed.

Warragamba Dam is not a flood mitigation dam. It's considered a water supply dam under state government legislation.

That means its purpose is to store the maximum amount of water to ensure the greatest possible supply.

The dam supplies 80 per cent of Sydney's drinking water, providing water security for 5 million people.

"There's a good reason why it's not authorised to be operated that way," Mr George said.

"Pre-releasing water into a river system before the rains arrive has very, very small, if not negligible, benefits in creating airspace in the dam.

"But it can have quite a big impact in charging the river system downstream."

Will the Warragamba Dam wall be raised?

That's unlikely to happen anytime soon, if ever. Locals are divided on the question.

If you speak to those who live and work on the flood plains, most want the dam wall raised.

But the Minns government scrapped plans to raise the wall, arguing it would cost $2 billion, take about a decade to complete and have a detrimental impact on the environment.

Premier Chris Minns has repeatedly declared he's "not committed to it". 

"Those low-lying communities know this only too well — 45 per cent of floodwaters in the catchment do not come over the top of Warragamba Dam," Mr Minns said on Saturday at an emergency services press conference about the weather event.

"That's a lot of money to put into what's termed a flood mitigation programme, that actually won't stop particularly flash flooding in those communities.

"There are many tributaries to that flood-prone community in Sydney's north-west."

There is concern the city's water security could suffer if Warragamba is run as a flood mitigation dam in its current configuration.

Water scientist Dr Ian Wright said storage levels dropped faster than ever before during the last drought.

"We were under crippling water stress heading into Black Summer, when the dam got below 50 per cent," he said.

"Having too much or too little water in Warragamba Dam, it's a risk either way."

Dr Wright agrees that using Warragamba for flood mitigation wouldn't eliminate the flood risk in the Hawkesbury-Nepean catchment.

"You can have floods without Warragamba contributing to that at all."

He argues the priority should be in flood-proofing infrastructure like houses, roads and bridges, and limiting development on flood-prone land.

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Here's why you must visit the Gulag Museum in Moscow

Children who were once labeled "enemies of the people" are now advanced in their years, but they can still recall the most terrible moments of their lives, when people in uniforms came for their parents late at night - the last time they ever saw them. Today, a young woman watches these video interviews in a room at the Gulag Museum. She starts to cry. A group of high school students hang on the guide's every word, dismay written on their faces. It seems they find it difficult to imagine that in the 1930s kids their own age found themselves behind barbed wire. Meanwhile, a group of foreigners sit in the museum cafe, trying to digest what they have just seen and unable to say a word.

In a prisoner's shoes

The Gulag History Museum  used to be based in a tiny building, but it recently moved to new premises and, with its huge archive, it now has a home of its own. The designers tried to make it look like a prison camp: intimidating steel gates, brickwork, dim light and lots of sullen and drab black color. From the very first minute, a visitor is immersed in the atmosphere of the darkest side of Soviet power - the terrible years of the Great Terror and repressions.

In the first room, you're greeted by numerous doors – a door from a camp barracks, a door from a cell in a remand prison in Magadan, a door from one of the Seven Sisters buildings in Moscow, from where people were taken away forever – it is a metaphor of moving to another, terrible world .

In the execution chamber, the floor is strewn with empty casings, while portraits of the murdered are projected onto a brick wall, one replacing another to the sound of cocking the gun. Archival footage shows prisoners working at a logging camp. There are personal items, including those found in mass graves. Once you're surrounded by all this, it is difficult to recover.

A system of reprisals from 1917 to Stalin's death

The purpose of the museum is to trace not only the history of the camps themselves, but of the entire system of political repressions. In order to show how executions without trial and investigation became part of the legal practice of the USSR, the museum displays documents, NKVD resolutions and quotes from leaders of the Revolution .

The Soviet authorities believed that in order to build a new world, it was necessary to exterminate people who, in one way or another, allegedly sabotaged it. The list of these categories of people was forever expanding. “Repression for the attainment of economic ends is a necessary weapon of the socialist dictatorship,” said one of the main ideologists of the revolution, Leon Trotsky .

The first political prisoners in the USSR were put into existing prisons and monasteries, from where monks were being expelled. A separate section of the exhibition is devoted to the Solovki Special-Purpose Camp, the first of its kind. Later, in the 1930s, during the years of the Great Terror, camps were built across the country and convict labor became one of the pillars of the Soviet economy.

For the first time, Gulag is presented through multimedia

The museum also offers audio versions of memoirs of people who went through the camps: the author of The Kolyma Tales , Varlam Shalamov; Alexander Solzhenitsyn (who has a separate room dedicated to his life); Leo Tolstoy’s daughter Alexandra; and many others .

An interactive map of the Gulag shows the chronology, location, number of prisoners and types of camps (corrective labor, special, screening and filtration) throughout the country. It is available online, so you can see it without visiting the museum - gulagmap.ru .

With the help of a VR helmet, you can take a virtual tour with museum director Roman Romanov around what remains of the Butugychag camp in the Russian Far East, where inmates worked in uranium mines without wearing any radiation protection. The museum plans to develop more virtual tours like this .

All information in the museum is translated into English; same as all the audio materials, and the videos have English subtitles. The museum has a documents center, where one can get information about victims of repressions.

In the last room, a voice on the speaker system reads out the names of people who were wrongfully convicted and killed. A young couple, holding hands and motionless, listen to the seemingly endless list. As part of the finale, there are horrifying figures displayed on the black wall: during the Great Terror, more than 20 million people were sent to prison camps; two million died there, and 700,000 were executed.

Watch Russia Beyond documentary: The memory of the Solovetsky islands  

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LaRouche addressed several other seminars as well, including one hosted by Academician Dmitri S. Lvov at the Central Mathematical Economics Institute (CEMI) of the Russian Academy of Sciences, where LaRouche's presentation was called "The Global Financial And Economic Crisis And The Strategic Role Of Russia." The LaRouches also had individual meetings with Russian scientists and politically active persons. On Dec. 13, they were received by Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov. Representatives of the media were in the audience at LaRouche's public events, while the popular Channel 3 TV program "Russky Dom" ("Russian Home") taped its own interview with him. The December issue of the Russian magazine Valyutny Spekulyant ( Currency Dealer ) had just come out, featuring LaRouche for the second month in a row, this time with an interview about the global financial crisis.

In all, several hundred members of the Russian intelligentsia, including economists, other scientists, political figures, Russian Orthodox Church clergy, and journalists, heard Lyndon LaRouche in person and were able to interact with him during question-and-answer sessions after his speeches. Hundreds of copies of the latest translations of LaRouche into Russian were distributed: a translation in full of "What Is Primitive Accumulation (On Academician Lvov's Warning)" ( EIR, Aug. 17, 2001), and excerpts from "The Spirit Of Russian Science."

This was LaRouche's second visit to Russia this year, the first being his arrival to testify at June 29 State Duma (lower house of parliament) hearings, convened by Economic Policy Committee Chairman Dr. Sergei Glazyev, on the possibilities for nations to survive the global financial crash. The exchanges of ideas during those visits deepened the dialogue between LaRouche and the Russian intelligentsia, which has become a scientific and policy-shaping force on a world scale over the past two decades.

There are two reasons for the special power of such a dialogue. One is Russia's status as one of only three national political cultures, in which the leading persons think in terms of their actions making an impact on the whole world (the others being the United States and Great Britain). The second reason, is the special nature of the Russian intelligentsia. LaRouche commented that the participants in the memorial symposium for Pobisk Kuznetsov, represented a higher and broader array of fundamental scientific competence than would be found in any comparable meeting, in any other nation of the world today. "Only in India and Italy," he noted, "do we meet a significant representation of intellectual life, comparable to that in Russia." The Russian scientists persevere in their creativity and intellectual integrity, despite the murderous poverty in which a majority of them live, and which resulted from the imposition of radical liberal economic policies upon Russia in 1991-98.

The Living Memory Of Pobisk Kuznetsov

Russian intellectuals and political figures are following LaRouche's analysis and proposals extremely closely; some of them have been doing so since the early 1980s.

LaRouche's direct conversations with Russian scientists date back to 1994, when Pobisk Kuznetsov hosted LaRouche on his first visit to Moscow ( EIR , June 10, 1994). LaRouche had been visited in prison the previous year by their mutual friend, the late Prof. Taras V. Muranivsky, who was to become LaRouche's closest collaborator in Russia. In the intervening years, especially after the Summer-Autumn 1998 turning point in the world financial crisis bore out LaRouche's forecasts and the need for his economic recovery proposals, the scientific work and writings of LaRouche have become better and better known in Russia. At these most recent scientific conferences, involving LaRouche and his collaborators, one after another Russian speaker has cited LaRouche's work, never in perfunctory fashion, but as the source of ideas that have been worked through, and are indispensable for that speaker's analysis of one or another problem of scientific investigation or political and economic analysis. Among them were scientists who now employ the unit of measure La (for "LaRouche"), introduced by Kuznetsov to express LaRouche's concept of "potential relative population density," and analysts who have mastered LaRouche's historical presentation of the deep, principled distinction of the American System of Political-Economy from British Imperial and other forms of monetarist practice.

The International Symposium "Space And Time In The Evolution Of The Global System 'Nature—Society—Man,' " was held at the Russian Academy of Continuing Education for Teachers. Co-sponsors of the conference, which was dedicated to the memory of Pobisk Kuznetsov and the continuation of his work, were the Moscow Academy of Culture and Educational Development and the Schiller Institute. Prof. Yuri Gromyko of the Moscow Academy of Culture and Educational Development chaired the conference organizing committee, while Dr. Nina Gromyko was the scientific secretary of the symposium.

Lyndon LaRouche spoke during the opening session of the symposium, after Professor Gromyko's introductory remarks and a report from Kuznetsov's close collaborator Dr. Spartak Nikanorov, on "The Status And Further Development Of The Scientific Legacy Of P.G. Kuznetsov." LaRouche's remarks, in which he took up the contributions of the universal minds Dmitri Mendeleyev and the Ukrainian-Russian Vladimir Vernadsky, were very well received by the audience of 100 scientists. A lively question-and-answer exchange followed his speech.

During an afternoon panel, Helga Zepp-LaRouche presented her October 2001 appeal for a Dialogue of Civilizations, which has been translated into Russian and was available in several hundred copies. On Dec. 15, Dr. Jonathan Tennenbaum of the Schiller Institute addressed the conference on the topic, "The Content Of Science Is The Process Of Its Development."

The General Breakdown Crisis

For all of his Russian audiences, LaRouche situated his remarks in what Rosa Luxemburg termed the "general breakdown crisis," which is currently under way. He discussed four topics, under that heading.

1. The nature of the attempted coup in the United States on Sept. 11, which was stopped—at least for the time being—when Russian President Vladimir Putin telephoned President George Bush and informed him that Russia had stopped the otherwise automatic escalation of mutual nuclear-forces alerts, with an order to Russian forces to stand down. The purpose of this coup, LaRouche emphasized, was to deceive the American population into believing that they were being attacked from outside the country, and thus to force the United States to adopt a policy that the President of the United States does not support.

2. The correlation of forces behind the Sept. 11 coup attempt and the policy they desired—the "clash of civilizations." LaRouche explained that the insane "Brzezinski-Huntington" strategy of provoking a clash of civilizations, which has its roots in British Imperial policies of the past two centuries and the legacy of Roman and kindred imperial behavior in still earlier times, went into a new, "live" phase in the Autumn of 1998, as a fear reaction on the part of Anglo-American elites to the disintegration of the financial and economic system on which their power is based. A turning point occurred after the collapse of the speculative GKO bond pyramid in Russia in August 1998, when then-Prime Minister Yevgeni Primakov visited India. In New Delhi, Primakov gave voice to the Anglo-Americans' worst nightmare, when he called for a "strategic triangle" of Russia-China-India to form the basis for cooperation in Eurasia.

3. The strategic situation today thus features a confrontation, where, on the one side, the Anglo-American faction (in the United States, traceable to the British takeover of U.S. policy-making after the assassination of President William McKinley in 1901) threatens to launch the "Third Geopolitical War." World Wars I and II may be understood as the first and second geopolitical wars. On the other side, a number of key world leaders, including President Putin, are moving to adopt the perspective of uniting Eurasian nations to meet the needs of all humanity. Because of its unique identity as a Eurasian nation, and because—as a nation that has not been defeated or occupied during recent centuries—Russia is one of the three national cultures in the world, whose elites think in terms of their actions shaping events on a worldwide scale, Russia has a special mission to fulfill in this process.

4. The solutions to the crisis of mankind today, lie in the direction of a New Bretton Woods, and Eurasian-centered infrastructure development projects. As LaRouche emphasized in his remarks at CEMI, the Anglo-Americans feared what Primakov put forward, because they know it would work! Sovereign nation-states have the prerogative and the ability to declare an emergency bankruptcy reorganization of the economy, and to create state and state-backed long-term, low-interest credit to finance real development. The development of interior areas, such as western China and Siberia, provide the challenge of developing a frontier, as well as being necessary to generate the resources for sustaining a growing population in Asia and elsewhere.

While immediate measures may be defined to deal with the emergencies facing humanity, LaRouche repeatedly posed the task of effecting a more profound, durable transformation of human social and cultural relations, for which the contribution of Mendeleyev, Vernadsky, and their followers is indispensable. We must change the relations among people, in such a way as to elevate them above the level of so-called "traditional cultures," so that they may locate their identity in the gift they can make to all humanity. Grappling with the scientific tasks of development—such fantastic challenges as the development of the Siberian frontier, which will be the greatest transformation of the Earth's biosphere ever undertaken—makes a profound political impact. Mankind is in a primitive condition, LaRouche said, with respect to what Vernadsky called the noösphere, the domain of noësis or human cognition, the consciousness of the power of the mind to make and test discoveries of scientific principle.

The intellectual and moral enthusiasm, with which LaRouche's second year-2001 visit to Russia was received, found expression in the comment by one senior analyst, who said, "Speaking as an atheist, I pray to God that you become President of the United States."

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