Watts Bar Dam

Watts Bar Dam
Watts Bar Dam
Watts Bar Dam is located in Tennessee
Watts Bar Dam
Location of Watts Bar Dam in Tennessee
Official nameWatts Bar Dam
LocationMeigs County and Rhea County, Tennessee, United States
Coordinates35°37′16.69″N 84°46′53.75″W / 35.6213028°N 84.7815972°W / 35.6213028; -84.7815972
Construction beganJuly 1, 1939
Opening dateJanuary 1, 1942
Operator(s)Tennessee Valley Authority
Dam and spillways
ImpoundsTennessee River
Height112 ft (34 m)
Length2,960 ft (900 m)
Reservoir
CreatesWatts Bar Lake
Total capacity1,175,000 acre⋅ft (1,449,000 dam3)[1]
Catchment area17,310 sq mi (44,800 km2)[1]
Power Station
Commission date1941-1944
Turbines5 x 38 MW Kaplan-type
Installed capacity190 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]

  1. ^ a b "Watts Bar Dam". National Performance of Dams Program, National Inventory of Dams. Stanford University. Retrieved 2012-10-10.
  2. ^ "Hydroelectric Plants in Tennessee". IndustCards. Retrieved 13 May 2014.
  3. ^ 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.