Benmore Dam

Today we took the long way home and enjoyed seeing some of the lakes/dams on the Waitaki Scheme.
The Benmore Dam is the largest dam within the Waitaki power scheme, located in the Canterbury Region of New Zealand's South Island. There are eight other power stations in the valley.
The dam is the largest earth-filled water-retaining structure in New Zealand. Its core is low permeability clay material, supported by two massive shoulders of river gravel. Lake Benmore has a volume of 12.5 million cubic metres. The dam's spillway can cope with 3,400 cubic metres of water per second, about 10 times the mean river flow. With a generating capacity of 540 MW, Benmore Power Station is the second largest hydro station in New Zealand behind Manapouri, and the largest dam in the country.The $62 million construction of the dam and hydroelectric station began in 1958. It was commissioned in 1965.
This is a panorama of the spillway area. It is beautiful at present with the willow trees just coming into leaf-such a soft green.

Much better large....