Formed by the Ord River Dam (1972), it has a storage capacity of 204,719,140,000 cubic feet (5,797,000,000 cubic m). The dam, fed by the 300-mile (480-kilometre) Ord River, measures 325 feet (99 m) high and 1,119 feet (341 m) long. Lake Argyle is the main reservoir in the Ord River Irrigation Scheme, a public works project dating from 1945 and designed to irrigate the surrounding plains. The controversial project was troubled with economic and agricultural problems, although some tropical crops flourished. The area surrounding Lake Argyle is sparsely populated, despite benefiting from an influx of workers following the discovery of the Argyle industrial diamond deposit in 1979.