Snowy Mountains Scheme is a hydroelectric and irrigation project in southeast Australia. The engineering project is so large that the American Society of Civil Engineers called it one of the Seven Wonders of the Engineering World.
Engineers constructed the project to provide supplementary power to the Australian Capital Territory, New South Wales, and Victoria. It also stores water, which is used to irrigate the Murray and Murrumbidgee river valleys. Work on the project, which covers an area of 2,000 square miles (5,200 square kilometers), began in 1949. During the next 26 years, as many as 7,300 workers from 32 countries were employed, often on three eight-hour shifts a day and working six or seven days a week, to complete the project.
The workers built 16 dams, dug 85 miles (137 kilometers) of tunnels, and constructed 7 power stations. The scheme also has two pumping stations and about 500 miles (800 kilometers) of aqueducts, as well as hundreds of kilometers of overhead power lines. The power lines conduct the electricity to centers that feed it into the power supplies of the states that receive it.
The scheme was officially opened by Sir Paul Hasluck, governor general of Australia, on Oct. 21, 1972. Another four years passed before all major work was completed. The last unit of the Tumut 3 power station was finished in 1974, bringing the total generating capacity of the scheme up to 3,740 megawatts. But the bulk of the work was completed three years earlier than planned. The project began generating electricity in 1955, when Guthega power station was opened.
