GIANT DAM

Press, Volume CII, Issue 30312, 12 December 1963, Page 13

GIANT DAM

Hydro Project In Canada

(N.Z.P.A-Reuter —Copyright) VANCOUVER.

One of the world’s major hydro-electric developments is being built by the British Columbia Hydro and Power Authority. By 1968 a massive earth-fill dam. known as Portage Mountain Dam, will rise 600 feet from bedrock in the Peace River canyon. The dam will stretch one and a quarter miles across the Peace River valley and behind it will form the largest lake in British Columbia, covering 680 square miles. An underground powerhouse deep in the bedrock beneath the dam’s east flank will have a total capacity of 2,300,000 kilowatts w’hen fully developed in the 1970’5. Combined power-producing capacity of Portage Mountain power-house and a 650,000 kilowatt dam-power-house installation to be built 12 miles downstream will be nearly three million kilowatts. Power from this dam will be delivered to main load areas in the south-west corner of British Columbia over a 580rnile transmission system operating at 5,000.000 volts. The giant dam will be built of 60 million cubic yards of gravel, sand and rock harvested from glacial deposits some four miles from the dam site. This is enough material to form a wall 12 feet high and nine feet wide all across Canada.

The Peace river will be diverted this autumn past a 3000-foot section of existing riverbed to permit workmen to prepare the river channel section of the dam's foundation.

In spite of 18 years of democratic levelling out, an aristocratic name or a title has lost little of its potency in modern Polish society.— Reuter.