Pieman River - Hydro Scheme

Hydro Scheme

In 1964, well-known photographers Olegas Truchanas and Peter Dombrovskis, together with John Hawkins and Howard Dean, canoed and photographed the Pieman. The damming of the river was the subject of a struggle between conservation groups and Hydro Tasmania, similar to Lake Pedder . The struggle went relatively unnoticed on mainland Australia - and it was the proposed Franklin Dam issue that was to catch a much wider Australian audience than the damming of the Pieman or King Rivers.

The Pieman River Power Development was approved by the Tasmanian government in 1971, construction began in 1974 and it was completed in 1987.

The development included three power stations and five dams:-

• Lake Murchison and Murchison Dam
• Lake Mackintosh, Tullabardine Dam and Mackintosh Dam (Mackintosh Power Station)
• Lake Rosebery and Bastyan Dam (Bastyan Power Station)
• Lake Pieman and Reece Dam (Reece Power Station)

It also included the two major tributaries of the Pieman, the Mackintosh and the Murchison rivers.

It remains Hydro Tasmania's most successfully multi-dammed catchment on the West Coast, and it was developed after the Upper Gordon Scheme (Lake Pedder) and was being completed in the era of the Franklin River controversy. It could be seen as the last major Power Development Scheme undertaken by the Hydro during its stage as an expanding dam-making enterprise. The King River and Henty River developments that followed required specifically challenging engineering on the part of Hydro, but were smaller projects in duration.