Managing the Tennessee River
The Tennessee River is at the center of TVA's work.
The river helps make electricity.
The river helps move goods from place to place.
The river is where people go to have fun.
The river and the reservoirs are also important to communities along the river. Many get their drinking water from reservoirs on the river. Communities also want protection from flooding from the river.
Working Together
There are 49 dams along the rivers. All those dams have to work together to provide all the benefits of the river system. TVA’s River Forecast Center manages the dams.
The center is in Knoxville, Tennessee, but it can control dams from North Carolina all the way to Kentucky. This center has people working every day, morning and night.
Here are some of the things they do:
- Schedule when to release water from the dam
- Tell river boats how deep the water is
- Make sure there’s enough water for the city water supply
- Scheduling when to release water from the dams for fun, like for river rafting
Lake Levels
One of the biggest jobs of the TVA river system is storing water in reservoirs. Why?
That water makes it possible for people to go boating and fishing.
TVA tries to keep reservoir water levels as high as possible in the summer so that people can have fun on the water. That helps local businesses and communities, too! (Link to Recreation-Community Impact)
TVA also has to make sure there’s room for more water when we get a lot of rain. The Tennessee Valley region gets more than 50 inches of rain each year! It’s important to have somewhere to put that water to prevent flooding.
Around Labor Day in September, TVA starts letting water out of reservoirs. Starting early helps make sure TVA doesn’t need to release a lot of water quickly. That can lead to flooding. By Jan. 1, reservoirs are at “flood-control levels.”
Preventing Floods
When there’s a lot of rain, the River Forecast Center team goes to work! They use weather forecasts to help determine which areas will get a lot of rain. Before it arrives, they try to move water along the river to make room for more water in reservoirs.
Before the dams were built, heavy rains would flood the region. Chattanooga’s downtown would flood often. Floods washed away homes, businesses and farmland. Even worse, many people died because of flooding.
Each year, TVA dams help prevent more than $300 million in flood damage in the TVA region and on the Ohio River and Mississippi River.
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