Blue Ridge Lake is a

reservoir A reservoir (; ) is an enlarged lake behind a dam, usually built to water storage, store fresh water, often doubling for hydroelectric power generation. Reservoirs are created by controlling a watercourse that drains an existing body of wa ...

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 so ...

Georgia Georgia most commonly refers to: * Georgia (country), a country in the South Caucasus * Georgia (U.S. state), a state in the southeastern United States Georgia may also refer to: People and fictional characters * Georgia (name), a list of pe ...

. 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 a location's vertical distance (height, elevation or altitude) in reference to a vertical datum based on a historic mean sea level. In geodesy, it is formalized as orthometric height. The zero level ...

. 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. Blue Ridge Lake was created by the completion of Blue Ridge Dam 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 high and is wide across the Toccoa river. The dam provides up to 13

megawatts The watt (symbol: W) is the unit of power or radiant flux in the International System of Units (SI), equal to 1 joule per second or 1 kg⋅m2⋅s−3. It is used to quantify the rate of energy transfer. The watt is named in honor o ...

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 of Scots origin, and was inherited from the earlier technology of mill pond ...

and to stabilize both the upstream and downstream faces of the dam. The project reduced the water level in the lake to approximately 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 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

- Bathymetry map for the reservoir {{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