Our town was born as a construction centre for the Benmore Dam. With over 4000 residents at it's peak it was and exciting town. The Benmore, Aviemore and Waitaki Dams are all very different and unique in their own way.
Benmore Dam
Benmore is the country’s second largest hydro station after Manapouri. It generates enough electricity each year for about 247,000 average New Zealand homes. The Benmore power station is located on New Zealand’s largest manmade lake – Lake Benmore – and is New Zealand’s largest earth dam.
Building Benmore
Construction started in 1958. The lake was filled in December 1964, and the first power was produced in January 1965. Initially Benmore was going to be a concrete dam like Waitaki, but advances in dam building techniques meant Benmore was able to be built using earth. At the time of construction, the dam was the largest in the Southern Hemisphere and the project was the biggest of its kind in New Zealand. Twelve million tonnes of material was moved during construction of the dam, and over 1500 workers were employed at the peak of the project.
Building a Dam and a Community
In October 1957 the plan to build the Benmore power station was approved in conjunction with the Cook Strait Cable. Work began to build a camp for the workers to live in. The first group of about 150 men arrived in February 1958 to begin work on the dam. In August 1958 the first 11 shopkeepers arrived to open stores to cater for the growing population. The workforce consisted of Ministry of Works employees and contractors. By the end of the year, there were over 450 workers living and working in Otematata. This was the start of significant growth in the small town.
Aviemore Dam
Aviemore generates enough electricity each year for about 120,000 average New Zealand homes. The Aviemore generators are the largest in New Zealand. The rotors are nearly 8 metres in diameter and weigh 210 tonnes. The dam itself is made in two parts: an earth dam and a concrete dam. It is the biggest dam of this type in New Zealand, and is the second largest concrete dam – the largest being the Clyde dam. With construction starting in 1962, Aviemore Dam was fully operational in 1968.
The Waitaki hydro scheme
Aviemore was the fourth hydro station to be built on the Waitaki hydro scheme. The Waitaki hydro scheme is made up of eight hydro stations on the Waitaki River in the South Island. Meridian owns and operates six of the hydro stations, located from Lake Pukaki to Waitaki.
Building Aviemore
Government approval to build the Aviemore dam and hydro station was granted in October 1962. The first concrete for the dam was placed in August 1964 – the largest single pour of concrete took three days. Two shifts of more than 40 men toiled to raise the dam from foundation level to an impressive height of 58 metres.
Aviemore dam has the largest penstocks in New Zealand – an impressive 7 metres in diameter. (A penstock is the pipe that carries the water into the power station.)
Waitaki Dam
About Waitaki
Waitaki generates enough electricity each year for about 62,000 average New Zealand homes. Waitaki was constructed by manual labour as a ‘make work’ project during the Depression of the 1930s.
Meridian is investing more than $40 million on a four-year project to refurbish the Waitaki dam and power station.
Building Waitaki
The Waitaki power station was the last to be constructed in New Zealand without modern mechanical equipment. Over half a million cubic metres of material was excavated, almost entirely by pick and shovel. It is a concrete arch dam with no spillway, but it’s designed to allow water to flow over the top if it floods.
The hydro station started generating electricity in 1935, with two 15 megawatt generators operating – enough to meet almost half of the South Island’s electricity needs at that time. Three more generators were installed between 1940 and 1949, bringing the generation capacity up to 75 megawatts.
The remaining two units were constructed from 1952 to 1954. The whole power house was extended and a new inlet and outlet channel constructed to accommodate them. The total generating capacity of the station is now 90 megawatts.
Birthplace of the world’s first social welfare system
The construction of Waitaki spawned the trial scheme of the world’s first social welfare system. The station is 8 kilometres upstream from the township of Kurow, where its doctor, D G McMillan, agreed to provide free medical treatment to workers and their families if they paid a small weekly sum into a common fund.
Later, Dr McMillan and Kurow’s Presbyterian minister, Arnold Nordmeyer, became Cabinet Ministers and helped instigate a similar scheme for the whole country. It became official in 1939.