Snowy Mountains System
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The Snowy Mountains System (English Snowy Mountains Scheme ) was a state construction project to secure the electricity and drinking water supply of the Australian capital Canberra in New South Wales as well as the land irrigation. The construction of one of the largest dams on earth took a total of 25 years from 1949 to 1974.
The water in the rivers is mainly fed by snowfields in the Australian Snowy Mountains . This water is led through a total of 225 km of tunnels and aqueducts and dammed by 16 dams . It can generate electricity with a total output of up to 3,740 megawatts in seven hydropower plants and is used to irrigate 2,500 km² of land. The total cost at that time was 800 million Australian dollars (AUD) , compared to a comparable value of 6 billion AUD in 2004 (about 4.5 billion euros). Snowcom , Australia's first computer, was used for planning from 1960 to 1967 .
In 1997 the American Society of Civil Engineers added the Snowy Mountains System to the List of International Historic Civil Engineering Landmarks .
Although the principles of hydropower generation are simple, this project was a milestone in Australia's not only industrial but also cultural development in the 20th century. This project employed 100,000 workers from 30 countries who opened up Australia to cultural diversity.
For Australians, the Snowy Mountains Scheme is an important symbol of their identity as an independent, multicultural and inventive country ( English : "important symbol of Australia's identity as an independent, multicultural and resourceful country"). When the state-owned Snowy Mountains System was to be privatized in 2005/2006, numerous Australians protested and the sale was abandoned.
history
The Aboriginal tribes Ngarigo, Walgalu and Southern Ngunnawal, who fished and hunted animals, lived in the Snowy Mountains for thousands of years before they were settled by the European colonialists in the early 18th century . During the period in which the Bogong butterflies were en masse in the caterpillar stage , other Aborigines came to the Snowy Mountains, who used the caterpillars as a source of food. At Jindabyne, the Aborigines took a hard rock for prehistoric tools and shaped it. Men and women had different locations for their ceremonies in the area. Well known is Boona, one of the Aboriginal elders who lived in the mountains. The Aboriginal tribes settled in the Snowy Mountains died out by the end of the 19th century due to displacement from their habitats and confrontations with the settlers. The «last Aborigine of the Snowy Mountains» died in 1916 in the vicinity of Cooma .
The first use of the Snowy River by the European colonizers was in the 1880s during dry spells for irrigation in agriculture. In 1908 it was investigated whether electrical energy for the new Australian capital Canberra could be generated from the amount of water in the Snowy River . At that time, the state of New South Wales transferred the water usage rights to the English and to the federal government of Australia. In 1944 the idea of generating electricity from the water of the Snowy River was taken up again. In 1947 a technical commission was set up to investigate and plan the use of the Snowy River. The technical commission developed a project with 16 waterworks and an 800 km long open canal. In 1949 the federal government passed a law called the Snowy Mountains Hydro-electric Power Act . The Commission's proposal has been reduced to today's concept. As a result, around 1,600 km of roads, 10 villages and 100 camps were built next to the dam during the construction period.
Overall system
The Snowy Mountains are the headwaters of major rivers such as the Murray River , Murrumbidgee River and Snowy River . In 1974, 145 km of tunnels, 80 km of aqueducts, 16 dams and 7 hydropower plants were completed, including the three Tumut hydropower plants , one of which, Tumut Power Station 3 , has an output of 1500 megawatts. Two of the hydropower plants are underground, Tumit Power Station 1 and 2, and there is also a pumping station . The entire system is a structure of a total of 225 kilometers of tunnels, pipelines and aqueducts. The largest diameter of the Eucumbene Snowy Tunnel is 6.35 meters and is 23.5 kilometers long. At 162 meters high, the Talbingo dam is the largest dam in the facility .
The overall project is one of the most complex electricity-generating power plants in the world; however, only two percent of the structure is visible on the earth's surface. William Hudson was knighted for his services as chief planner of the entire facility .
Economy and Politics
The snow mountains cover an area of around 7,000 km² and thus offer a large water management and hydroelectric reservoir with which 2500 km² of agricultural area can be irrigated and 3,740 megawatts of electricity generated. Every year around 2,100 trillion liters of water flow through the entire system.
Work on this project began in 1949 and ended after 25 years in 1974. The operator of the entire plant, the Snowy Hydro Scheme , was owned by the states of New South Wales , Victoria and the Federal Government of Australia. In December 2005, the New South Wales government announced that it would sell its 58 percent stake in the Snowy Mountains System property. Victoria and the Government of Australia followed suit.
As a result, there was a movement against sales in Australia. Initial opposition to the plans came from the Mayors of Cooma-Monaro Shire and Snowy River Shire, as well as other personalities in Jindabyne and Cooma , who organized protests in close proximity to the Snowy Mountains system. The Snowy River Shire Council was the first to state that it would vote against the sale. Another 100 mayors from local councils in New South Wales joined them. Well-known politicians from the Greens, such as Bob Brown , the Independents, and the National Party of Australia , such as Senator Kay Hull , joined the protest movement, which included farmers, conservatives and ordinary Australians. Senator Brown introduced a motion to the federal parliament with the aim of making it clear that a vote for the sale would violate applicable law and that the sale should therefore be stopped. Ultimately, the sale appeared politically unenforceable, and the federal government announced through Prime Minister Howard on June 2, 2006 that it no longer intended to sell its 13% stake. With that the project was stopped.
Cultural opening
Construction began in the Snowy Mountains in 1949 and 100,000 workers were employed, two-thirds of whom were from abroad. The result of the construction project was not only a better supply of water and electricity for Australia, but also a multicultural opening of the country after the Second World War . At first the workers from abroad left their families at home in Europe because they wanted to save the money for their families. The construction of the facility was dangerous, with more than 120 construction workers fatally injured during the entire construction period.
The first requirements of 795 German workers by the Snowy Mountains Authority were announced in a circular from the Federal Office for Emigration in Bremen in 1951. The applicants were examined by fourteen Australian doctors before they left Cologne, had to meet health requirements and were less than 45 years old. On April 1, 1951, 44 first German immigrants arrived in Australia by plane and in the following year 750 specially trained German skilled workers were employed by the Snowy Mountains Authority ; in 1952 there were only about 100 left. They had received two-year contracts and lamented the living, living and working conditions. It was felt to be particularly negative that the first jobs were far from civilization and that they always had to live closely with the same group of people. To make matters worse, the Australians, with their English-purist lifestyle, allowed the only day off on Sunday, on which no dance, cinema or other cultural events took place. In the closest place to the first work - in Cooma - all locations were closed on Sunday.
The workers came from more than 30 countries including England, Germany, Czechoslovakia , Italy , France , the United States, and Norway . In the 1950s and 1960s, Australian immigration policy pursued assimilation goals. The “new Australians” who were working on the dam should form a “truly British nation on this side of the world” . Between 1948 and 1983, after five years in Australia, they were granted civil and electoral rights or they were naturalized . For Australia this workforce was a partial reorientation towards new and different cultural influences.
ecology
The Snowy Mountains System is located in Kosciuszko National Park , and nature changes and erosion were to be expected. Although the generation of energy with hydropower is environmentally friendly, dams and the irrigation measures have consequences for plants and animals. The impact in the Snowy Mountains system is particularly serious where only one percent of the water flows that flowed before the dam was built, such as the outflow from Lake Jindabyne . There the farmers were threatened in their livelihoods and fishing tourism is no longer possible there. After a group like the Snowy River Alliance had formed in the 1990s and campaigned for the restoration of the Snowy River, the responsible governments reacted in 1998 and set up a commission to investigate the criticism. The governments of New South Wales and Victoria pledged in 2000 that change would be initiated and that 28% percent (minimum 21%) of the water should return to the Snowy River by 2010.
The small and changing water volume had a particularly negative impact on the riparian zones. Investigations over a distance of 75 kilometers along the Tumut River have shown that bank erosion has lost around two hectares of land per kilometer of river length since the dam was built. The clear signs of erosion of the banks lead to a severe impairment of the ecosystem, especially for fish and invertebrates. In addition, the low volume of water and the low water level change the filtering of nutrients, and the lack of bank planting leads to a lower input of substances that are in branches and leaves. This in turn has a negative impact on the diet of fish and invertebrates.
The original fish population was significantly affected by both the low water temperatures and the stocking of trout that were not native to the lake and are now hunting the existing fish population.
On the one hand, huge areas for plants and animals have been lost due to the construction of the dams, which are now flooded by dams. The area that covers the entire Snowy Mountains system is about 5,000 km². On the other hand, new places and farms have emerged. The use of the Snowy Mountains and rivers has changed dramatically, and an area for recreational tourism has emerged, where winter sports, water sports, hiking and fishing can be enjoyed.
Buildings
Main reservoirs and water reservoirs
The most important dams are listed below, with the year of completion in brackets in chronological order:
- Guthega Dam (1955)
- Lake Eucumbene (1958)
- Tumut Pond Reservoir (1959)
- Happy Jacks Pondage (1959)
- Tumut Pond Reservoir (1959)
- Tantangara Dam (1960)
- Tumut 2 (1961)
- Tooma Reservoir (1961)
- Deep Creek (1961)
- Island Bend (1965)
- Khancoban (1966)
- Geehi (1966)
- Blowering Dam (1968)
- Lake Jindabyne (1967)
- Jounama (1968)
- Murray 2 (1968)
- Talbingo Reservoir (1970) (the largest reservoir)
Hydropower plants
The largest hydropower plant is the Tumut Power Station 3 . There are seven hydropower plants in operation, which are listed below in chronological order of their creation and with their output in megawatts.
- Guthega Power Station, (output 60 MW) (1955)
- Tumut Power Station 1 , (output 330 MW) (1959)
- Tumut Power Station 2 , (output 286 MW) (1961)
- Blowering Power Station, (output 80 MW) (1967)
- Murray 1 Power Station, (output 950 MW) (1967)
- Murray 2 Power Station, (output 550 MW) (1969)
- Tumut Power Station 3 , (output 1500 MW) (1974)
Main tunnel
The largest main tunnels through which the water passes are listed here:
- Eucumbene Snowy (23.5 km), diameter 6.35 m
- Eucumbene Tumut (22.2 km), diameter 6.9 m
- Murrumbidgee Eucumbene (21.9 km), diameter 3.91 m
- Snowy-Geehi (14.5 km), diameter 6.3 m
- Tooma Tumut (14.3 km), diameter 3.7 m
- Jindabee-Island Bend (9.9 km), diameter 3.95 m
Web links
- RJ Cameron: Official Yearbook of the Commonwealth of Australia 1977, p. 445. Edited by the Australian Bureau of Statistics. No. 62/1977 and 1978 map of the Snowy Mountains system with details of the hydropower stations on Google Books
- Technical data and values of the entire system (PDF; 727 kB)
- Details of the dam construction on powerhousemuseum.com
- Historical pictures of the builders on flickr.com
- Pictures of the construction projects on nla.gov.au
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c d Australian History: Snowy Mountain Scheme on australianhistory.org ( Memento of the original from July 13, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , accessed June 6, 2010
- ↑ a b c d Information on culturanreaction.gov.au , accessed on June 2, 2010
- ↑ Londsay Smith: Indigenous History. The Original Inhabitants of Kiandra on kiandrahistory.net , accessed June 5, 2010
- ↑ a b Information on services.eng.uts.edu.au ( Memento of the original from July 2, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF; 727 kB), accessed on June 4, 2010
- ↑ Australian Alps on down-under.org ( page no longer available , search in web archives ) Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , accessed June 2, 2010
- ↑ Snowy Mountains Hydro-Electric Power Act 1949 ( page no longer available , search in web archives ) Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , accessed June 7, 2001
- ↑ Snowy protest now planned as celebration. June 5, 2006, information on Services Pty Ltd. , accessed June 8, 2010
- ↑ Mike Head: Australia: Howard abandons Snowy Hydro sale to save the National Party on wsws.org . Retrieved June 8, 2010
- ↑ Bettina Biedermann: A paid passage. The emigration of Germans to Australia in the 1950s. (Dissertation) p. 125 ff. Metropolis-Verlag, Marburg 2006. ISBN 3-89518-539-6 partly online on Google Books . Retrieved June 24, 2010
- ↑ a b Information on powerhousemuseum.com ( Memento of the original from April 8, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , accessed June 2, 2010
- ↑ Information on parliament.nsw.gov.au . Retrieved June 3, 2010
- ↑ Investigation of the changes on the banks of the Snowy Mountians system ( memento of the original from March 26, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , accessed June 3, 2010
- ↑ Reservoirs on snowyhydro.com.au ( Memento of the original from March 21, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , accessed June 2, 2010
- ↑ Wasserkraftwerk on snowyhydro.com.au ( memento of the original from March 21, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , accessed June 2, 2010
