Snowy Hydro's tunnelling machine caused a sinkhole and spent months barely moving, then the troubled project's tunnel began filling with gas.
Workers going underground at the Snowy 2.0 site say they were told that there was nothing to worry about, that it was just water vapour.The previous year, the giant machine digging tunnels for the project had caused a sinkhole to open up.
Its 15km journey below Kosciuszko National Park should be well underway by now, but it's gone just 150m.At Florence's launch, in March 2022, then-Snowy Hydro chief executive Paul Broad was in an expansive mood."You think about the kids and the world they are going to inherit." In the weeks before Florence was launched, workers had drilled ahead to explore the tunnel's planned route.
Snowy Hydro chief executive Dennis Barnes was appointed in February this year and has been tasked with turning around the troubled project."We just didn't know it was that soft," he says."Clearly, it's an oversight, it's wrong.
Then, just before Christmas, Florence struck more trouble. Months of tunnelling through wet sandy soil had caused the ground above to collapse and a sinkhole to open up.Snowy had another chance to level with the public, but chose to put out a carefully worded corporate video:Workers had warned a sinkhole was likely.
The AWU says workers who refused to continue their shift that chilly July night were told that it was just water vapour. Only later was it identified as isocyanate, a hazardous chemical."We wouldn't, as a matter of course, describe all of the work we're doing, whether it's proactive or reactive around safety," he says."It's one of the only times where I've actually had a proper emergency, where the tunnel had to be evacuated," Mr Callinan says.
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