The federal and NSW governments have promised 4000 direct jobs as a result of the project, which Cr Hayes is hoping will go to workers in the region.

Cr Hayes said "the impression" from the community's meetings with Snowy Hydro was that the company "is keen to employ as many people as they can locally".

Australia's largest renewable energy project passed its final hurdle on Tuesday, when the federal environment department approved the project's environmental impact statement.

"Hallelujah ... it is an opportunity for some of those people who might find it difficult after the fires, their jobs may disappear," Cr Hayes said.

About half of all jobs in the Snowy Valleys local government area are either directly or indirectly associated with the timber industry.

The industry is expected to take a significant hit after the devastating summer bushfires, which impacted 37,000ha of forest pine plantations in the Tumut region.

Cr Hayes said the timber industry was currently going "hell for leather" harvesting damaged trees and it was hard to say exactly how many jobs would be lost.

"Because they're anxious to get as many of them down and harvested and chipped and logged and exported ... while they're still viable," he said.

Cr Hayes said he wanted forestry workers impacted by the fires to move into construction jobs with Snowy 2.0 once their timber jobs were no longer viable.

"We hope they can transition ... the last thing we want to see is people leaving our region," he said.

Snowy Hydro relations manager Dean Lynch said Tuesday's green light was "the last piece of the puzzle" for a project he said would deliver "great economic outcomes for the region".

Cr Hayes and Mr Lynch acknowledged that most Snowy 2.0 workers would be employed only during its construction, which is currently expected to finish in 2026.

"At the end of the project there'll be very few people employed. It doesn't need a lot of people to run these things ... [but] we're looking at the positives," Cr Hayes said.

Mr Lynch said Snowy Hydro wanted to leave behind a "skills legacy" and had run recruitment sessions in Tumut, Tumbarumba and Cooma.

"We want to leave a skilled workforce after the project is finished: have local people trained, apprentices put on. We want to see people be trained for the life of the project and use those skills after it," he said.

Snowy Hydro must invest almost $100 million in environmental works in a move intended to allay fears the project would devastate biodiversity in Kosciuszko National Park.

In March a group of engineers, economists and environmentalists called for an independent review into the project to address concerns it would cost at least 500 per cent more than its initial $2 billion estimate, as well as potentially harm the environment.