BIG ARTIFICIAL LAKE.

Hawera Star, Volume XLVIII, 10 December 1928, Page 10

BIG ARTIFICIAL LAKE.

HYDRO-ELECTRIC SCHEME IN WALES.

The power station of a £2,000,000 hyrdo-eiectric scheme which includes what is claimed to be the biggest artificial lake in North Wales, draining 22 square miles of watershed, was opened in the presence of CbL Wilfred W. I Ashley, Minister of Transport. The 'lake is in a beautiful moor land, two miles from Port Madoc. It lias been made by building 60-foot thick reinforced concrete barriers across the outlets in Green Pryser Glen in the long-winding vale of Festiniog and Inns taken three years to construct The lake is now only partly full but the winter rains are expected to fill it to a depth of 50 feet, submerging 1200 acres of farm land including houses, a chapel and a- road. The water is conveyed from the lake by a steel culvert, 9;V feet in* diameter- supported across the valley on concrete pillars and traversing two tunnels blasted through the mountainside, till after nine furlongs it plunges down a high pressure steel tube to the turbine power station, 630 feet below. The steel lattice towers carry 50,000,000 units (killowatts) 340’ miles across mountains and 1 moors to 36 municipalities, and eleptric service companies and 23 industrial undertakings, including slate and granite quarries, cement works, collieries, and railway engineering shops clotted ,over 4000 square milesrin eight counties of Wales and England as far west- as Crewe.