The waterways and catchments of the Snowy Mountains have immense cultural, social, environmental, and economic values. In addition to being Ngarigo, Walgalu, Ngunnawal and Wiradjuri Country, these alpine areas and the rivers originating from them have long been meeting places, pathways, and resources for many Aboriginal nations and groups across the south-east of the Australian continent.
Following European colonisation, the Snowy Mountains became a focal point for economic activities of the settler state, such as mining and livestock farming, that have altered the region’s ecosystems. The 1950s saw construction begin on the Snowy Mountains Scheme – a mega project consisting of 16 major dams, 80 km of aqueducts, and 145 km of interconnected tunnels. Built to divert water from the Snowy and upper Murrumbidgee rivers for inland irrigation, costs have been recovered over subsequent decades through the operation of 9 power stations with a total generating capacity of 4,100 megawatts.
Today, the Snowy Mountains Scheme is playing an important role in maintaining electricity system reliability as coal plants are retired and variable renewable energy expands rapidly. The value of the Scheme’s storages to deliver irrigation and environmental water to the Murray and lower Murrumbidgee are growing under climate change. But there are trade-offs to manage, and growing demands for environmental and cultural water flows to support a range of downstream values on dammed and diverted rivers. Policy processes are underway at Federal and State/Territory levels to reform the regulation of the Scheme and deliver a range of objectives beyond electricity generation and irrigation water supply.
To understand potential futures for the Snowy Mountains Scheme, we first need to understand its past and ongoing colonial history. Embedded in the regulation of the Scheme are values, priorities, and ways of understanding water that span the 1901 federation of Australian colonies through to the 1998 Snowy Water Inquiry and the 2018 investment decision for the Snowy 2.0 pumped hydropower project. A critical examination of social and political determinants of decision-making during that period will support future policy reforms to reconcile the Scheme’s infrastructure, and broader alpine water and land management, with Indigenous rights, biodiversity loss, and climate change.
The ANU Institute for Water Futures (https://waterfutures.anu.edu.au/) is offering two $5,000 scholarships for Masters students undertaking research projects on water management in the Snowy Mountains in 2024. Each project will be conducted within a program across the Crawford School of Public Policy, School of History, Fenner School of Environment and Society, and Centre for the Public Awareness of Science, co-supervised by a researcher at the student’s school/centre and another member of the Award committee from a different school/centre.
The Award committee includes (alphabetical):
Dr Hannah Feldman, ANU School of Cybernetics and Institute for Water Futures
Associate Professor Ruth Morgan, Centre for Environmental History, School of History
Dr Ehsan Nabavi, Centre for the Public Awareness of Science
Dr Simon West, Crawford School of Public Policy
Associate Professor Carina Wyborn, Fenner School of Environment and Society and Institute for Water Futures
Dr Paul Wyrwoll, Crawford School of Public Policy and Institute for Water Futures (Award Convenor)
The 2024 Awardees will be invited to engage with a broader applied research program on water management in the Snowy Mountains and the Canberra region. This may include field trips, workshops, and other events attended by Institute for Water Futures researchers and students.
Eligibility
