Why can’t TVA keep lake levels up year-round?
If you live near a TVA reservoir, you’ve seen it yourself… The water level can go up and down during the summer, and by Labor Day it can start to drop quickly. Before long you’ve got to cross a mudflat to get from the shoreline to the water. Nobody likes mudflats—including the people at TVA who let the water out of the reservoirs. But they can’t be avoided if the dams are to do the job they were built to do. Before the dams in the TVA system were built, just about every major storm resulted in serious flood damage to homes and businesses along the river. Now, most of this damage can be avoided by closing upstream dams and holding back the stormwaters until the danger of flooding is over. But for this to work there has to be room in the reservoirs to hold the extra water. How does TVA make this room? You guessed it: by lowering the water level before the “flood season” begins. Just as you let water out of the bathtub by opening the drain, TVA can open gates in the dams to let water ou
