Blue Ridge Lake is a

reservoir A reservoir (; from French ''réservoir'' ) is an enlarged lake behind a dam. Such a dam may be either artificial, built to store fresh water or it may be a natural formation. Reservoirs can be created in a number of ways, including contro ...

in Fannin County, in the northern portion of the

U.S. state In the United States, a state is a constituent political entity, of which there are 50. Bound together in a political union, each state holds governmental jurisdiction over a separate and defined geographic territory where it shares its sove ...

Georgia Georgia most commonly refers to: * Georgia (country), a country in the Caucasus region of Eurasia * Georgia (U.S. state), a state in the Southeast United States Georgia may also refer to: Places Historical states and entities * Related to the ...

. The reservoir encompasses of water, and a "full summer pool" of approximately

above mean sea level Height above mean sea level is a measure of the vertical distance ( height, elevation or altitude) of a location in reference to a historic mean sea level taken as a vertical datum. In geodesy, it is formalized as '' orthometric heights''. Th ...

. It is managed by the

Tennessee Valley Authority The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) is a federally owned electric utility corporation in the United States. TVA's service area covers all of Tennessee, portions of Alabama, Mississippi, and Kentucky, and small areas of Georgia, North Carolin ...

and is primarily fed by the

Toccoa River The Toccoa River and Ocoee River are the names in use for a single river that flows northwestward through the southern Appalachian Mountains of the southeastern United States. It is a tributary of the Hiwassee River, which it joins in Polk Co ...

. Blue Ridge Lake was created by the completion of

Blue Ridge Dam Blue Ridge Dam is a hydroelectric dam on the Toccoa River in Fannin County, in the U.S. state of Georgia. It is the uppermost of four dams on the Toccoa/Ocoee River owned and operated by the Tennessee Valley Authority. The dam impounds the Bl ...

and has approximately of shoreline and a flood storage capacity of . The lake's levels fluctuate by about in a typical year. Blue Ridge Dam was completed in 1930. It stands 175 feet high and is 1,553 feet wide across the Toccoa river. The dam provides up to 13 megawatts of power via a single generator.

Drawdown 2010

As part of the Blue Ridge Dam Rehabilitation project, the

, began slowly lowering the elevation of Blue Ridge Lake in July 2010. This rehabilitation project aimed to repair the dam

penstock A penstock is a sluice or gate or intake structure that controls water flow, or an enclosed pipe that delivers water to hydro turbines and sewerage systems. The term is inherited from the earlier technology of mill ponds and watermills. H ...

and to stabilize both the upstream and downstream faces of the dam. The project reduced the water level in the lake to approximately 1630 feet above sea level around the middle of October 2010 and the portion of work requiring the drawdown was completed in April 2011 when refilling of the lake began. However, TVA decided to hold the lake level at 1,672 feet through the summer of 2012 due to unexpected ground movement experienced in March 2012.

References

External links

Blue Ridge Reservoir
— official TVA site

— for Lake Blue Ridge at the TVA site {{authority control Hiwassee River Tennessee Valley Authority dams Dams in Georgia (U.S. state) Dams completed in 1930 Blue Ridge Landforms of Fannin County, Georgia Protected areas of Fannin County, Georgia