New Tas Hydro Canal near Tyndal creek

[icefest]

How many of these hydro expansions are there?

I just noticed that there is a recent expansion of diversion canal on the western face of the Tyndals. Is this common knowledge?

Looks like it was completed about 5 years ago.

2018:


2015: Halfway complete


2013: Not yet Started

[north-north-west]

The canal was already there, I think. It's just been cleaned up and the road alongside upgraded so it's more obvious. There are quite a few of the old gravel roads and 4WD tracks in the west that have had significant maintenance or improvement works recently, although that's probably more due to mineral exploration and exploitation that anything else. Then there's the fancy new MTB track network at Zeehan ... the scars on the country out there are horrid.

[Last]

No, it's new. If you go onto Thelist and flick between the 2 sets of satellite images it's not there in "State aerial photo" and there in "ESRI imagery".

[north-north-west]

*shrug*
I walked along part of a canal/creek there the first time I went into the Tyndals. There was some sort of watercourse along that line, with an old vehicle track beside it.

[Last]

Can you point it out in icefest's 3rd picture? I walked the Hydro access road from the Hamilton moraine to the Tyndall access track (don't ask) 8 years ago. It wasn't there then.

[north-north-west]

2013 image:

if you follow a straight line east from the small dam and its access road to the pointy southern end of the next section of open ground you'll see the end of an old vehicle track that runs roughly NE. That connects with another curved line - the old creek/canal I followed - that runs almost due north from a transmission line side track.
I'm trying to dig out photos but I may not have taken any on that little ramble due to the weather.

[Last]

It may have been something connected to the abandoned dam site visible at the left of the 2013 image. I don't know much about the abandoned dam but I have seen it on maps. I walked down the roads on the other side of the river. Various works were visible there.

[north-north-west]

This is what I'm talking about. It was an old canal or minor creek line with an old overgrown vehicle track following it. You wouldn't have been able to see it from either the road or up top. Not quite the same line as the new work, but I'm pretty sure they've just realigned, extended and deepened it.

Attachments

[icefest]

Three images for comparison.
First is the State Sat maps - Showing the lack of the canal
Second is the State hillshade map - Showing the lack of the canal, and showing all soil/excavation works in the past 50 decades (taken the same time as the image above)
Last is ESRI Sat maps, showing the massive scale of the new excavation

[north-north-west]

I'd like to know what it's for. One would expect a pipeline to connect to Plimsoll or the network below Margaret, but there's no sign of that and the water draining off that side of the Tyndalls would end up in Plimsoll anyway, wouldn't it?. And given that the Margaret PS is decommissioned ... water supply for Queenstown?

[Last]

It captures water that would otherwise go down the Langdon river and directs it to Lake Plimsoll via Tyndall creek. What the abandoned dam on the Langdon river I referred to earlier was supposed to do. Hydro have done a number of these minor water scavenging projects in the past, for example the Behive canal.