Pukaki high dam proceeds

Press, Volume CXI, Issue 32707, 9 September 1971, Page 12

Pukaki high dam proceeds

Ministry of Works men at Twizel have started building a new high dam on the edge of Lake Pukaki. The dam will be 200 ft high and 1400 ft long. It will cost about s3om and will make it possible to raise the level of the lake by 123 ft.

The new dam will replace the existing control dam which releases water into the Pukaki River. The engineer in charge of the dam construction (Mr T. Storey) said yesterday that, all going well, the dam would be built and the lake ready for filling by October, 1976. The dam will be made of silt and gravel on a natural base. It will be similar in design to the dam at Benmore, but smaller. Three scrapers and two bulldozers have already started forming a road on the

right bank of the river along i which spoil from the diversion culvert excavations will be hauled. Site office foun- ' dations and underground fuel tanks are also being prepared. The diversion culvert to take the outflow from Lake Pukaki while the high dam ‘ is under construction will be I completed by the winter of 1973. The new dam will make it possible to store double the quantity of summer thaw water, which can be released for power generation at stations between Pukaki and Benmore during the winter. ' A start on the dam was authorised soon after the announcement that a further s3m had been allocated by the Government for the Upper Waitaki project The project engineer. (Mr S. M. J. Smith) said yesterday that the additional allocation had increased the total expenditure this year from s9.Bm to $12.8m. The extra money would be spread round the entire project—the town of Twizel, the canal construction and the new high dam. Mr Smith said that new heavy earth-moving equipment was expected in six to nine months. The existing machinery was getting old. The three 10 cu. yard front- 1 end loaders, 14 50-ton dump waggons and 10 bulldozers 1 which were expected would 1 be spread over various works. [ Extra men are to be taken ' on as soon as housing and 1 development increases. !