| Watts Bar Dam | |
|---|---|
 Watts Bar Dam | |
  Location of Watts Bar Dam in Tennessee | |
| Official name | Watts Bar Dam |
| Location | Meigs County and Rhea County, Tennessee, United States |
| Coordinates | 35°37′16.69″N 84°46′53.75″W / 35.6213028°N 84.7815972°W |
| Construction began | July 1, 1939 |
| Opening date | January 1, 1942 |
| Operator(s) | Tennessee Valley Authority |
| Dam and spillways | |
| Impounds | Tennessee River |
| Height | 112 ft (34 m) |
| Length | 2,960 ft (900 m) |
| Reservoir | |
| Creates | Watts Bar Lake |
| Total capacity | 1,175,000 acre⋅ft (1,449,000 dam3)[1] |
| Catchment area | 17,310 sq mi (44,800 km2)[1] |
| Power Station | |
| Commission date | 1941-1944 |
| Turbines | 5 x 38 MW Kaplan-type |
| Installed capacity | 190 MW[2] |
Watts Bar Dam is a hydroelectric dam on the Tennessee River in Meigs and Rhea counties in Tennessee, United States. The dam is one of nine dams on the main Tennessee River channel operated by the Tennessee Valley Authority, which built the dam in the early 1940s to provide flood control and electricity and to help create a continuous navigable channel along the entire length of the river. The dam is the technical boundary between the 39,090-acre (15,820 ha) Watts Bar Lake— which it impounds— and Chickamauga Lake, which stretches from the dam's tailwaters southward to Chattanooga.
Watts Bar Dam is named for Watt Island, a sandbar located at the dam site prior to the dam's construction.[3]
- ^ a b "Watts Bar Dam". National Performance of Dams Program, National Inventory of Dams. Stanford University. Retrieved 2012-10-10.
- ^ "Hydroelectric Plants in Tennessee". IndustCards. Retrieved 13 May 2014.
- ^ Tennessee Valley Authority, The Watts Bar Project: A Comprehensive Report on the Planning, Design, Construction, and Initial Operations of the Watts Bar Project, Technical Report No. 9 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1949), 1-11, 39-47.