Bennett Dam

On Sunday June 22nd Gord Jarvie, Doris, and myself drove the scenic route to Bennett Dam. The week before I flew over the dam with my son Shaun. I think they need to provide a landing strip so we could visit more often without the long car ride.

To the right of the dam you can see the 10 large columbs that are the inlets for the 10 turbines. The blue "cabin" on this end can travel across to each inlet and is equiped with the ability to block any one inlet to allow maintanance work. Williston Lake in the background is the biggest lake in B.C. ( Man made or otherwise.) It is 250 miles long and averages 3 miles wide.

This is looking down from the northern look-out over the dam outlet. From here the water travels aproximatly 20 km. to the Peace Canyon Dam where the water is re-used to generate more power. Site "C" is in the planning down stream. When traveling the valley from Fort St. John one can see signs indicating high water levels thoughout the canyon. Another huge lake will be created with this third phase of dams.

The earth filled dam was made from material found 5 miles down stream and was transported to the dam site via the longest conveyer belt in the world. The centre consists of fine sand which is held in place with larger rock placed on either side. The dam is 2 km. long and 183 meters high, 800 meters wide at it's base, and 9 meters wide at top and contains enough material to build a wall 4 meters wide and 4 meters high from Vancouver to Halifax.

The picture above was taken from the viewpoint parking lot on the north side of the dam. The picture below was taken several days earlier from the air in my plane. I found it very interesting how simular they were. Just above the left outflow you can see a portal where we traveled in a bus into the dam 500' below the water level. We then walked into the generating room which is three football fields long and

The W.A.C. Bennett Dam, completed in 1967, was a colossal project in its time and remains one of BC's most impressive to date. As one of the world's largest earth-filled structures, the dam impounds BC's largest reservoir - 1,761-sq km (680-sq mi) Williston Lake, which took five years to fill!

On our way to "tour" the dam from the air we flew through several small rainstorms. They lasted for a very short time.

We were flying quite low towards the mouth of the dam. We flew through another 30 second rain storm. The dam itself is situated between a narrow valley. This is the beginning of that valley.

Rounding the corner this channel of water leads to the spillway of the dam.

You can enlarge the pictures by clicking on them.

The small valley opens up to the dam edge.

Here you can see two of the three tunnels that were built to devert the river creating a dry river bed to build the dam on. They no longer have a function. Just left of the picture there is a concrete spill way where water can be released should the dam become too full. The spillway turns up at the end to send water into a "spray" so as to control erosion. For some reason I don't have a picture of this.

W.A.C. Bennett Dam and generating station form the larges hydroelectic facility in B.C. Hydro's system, with the capacity to product more than 2,730,000 kilowatts of electric power. There are over 30 dams in BC and the Bennett dam together with Peace provide 30% of all of B.C's power.

The town of Hudson Hope is situated approx. 16 km east of the Bennett Dam. We thought we would stop at the airport and stretch our legs. This is the largest building at the airport. It is at an elevation of 2,200' above sea level.

My son Shaun came with me on this flight.

Here is my baby sitting on the tarmack at Hudson Hope airport.

The run way has a few cracks in it.

Taking off from the airport i took some pictures of the town of Hudson Hope. It's a quaint little town situated along the rivers edge. Looks like a town where I would like to live. One would think the existance of Hudson Hope began because of the dam construction. However Hudson Hope existed long before. Hudson Hope is B.C.'s third oldest community. Current population is 1000.

Dawson Creek welcomed us back with a rainbow! If you wish to know more about the Bennett dam click on this blogs title. This will link you to BC Hydro's Bennett dam web site. Have a GREAT day my friends.