slgwv's photos with the keyword: spillway

Frenchman Lake, the reservoir formed by the dam, is more than brimful again this year. So we've staved off drought another year--

Bypass spillway flowing at Davis Creek Dam, in the headwaters of the Middle Fork of the Feather River, California. This hasn't happened in a number of years! The concrete spillway itself ends near the top behind the pine tree, and the water just makes a waterfall from there. The hydropower capacity is also maxed out--that's the tailrace from the turbines in the foreground (outlined).

Hiram M. Chittenden locks and spillway on the Lake Washington Ship Canal, Seattle, Washington state. The Ship Canal connects Lake Washington to Puget Sound via Lake Union, right thru Seattle. The locks, administered by the US Army(!) Corps of Engineers, deal with the difference in water level between the Sound and the lake. They're on the far (north) side of the spillway. The Canal was built in 1916, lowering the level of Lake Washington some 9 ft. The lake used to drain out to the south to the Duwamish River, but now its only outlet is thru the Canal. There's no _way_ the project would pass environmental muster these days! ;) Because the Canal is now also the sole outlet for the lake, this set of spillway gates helps regulate water flow. The locks are also said to be unusual in that they're right at the boundary between fresh and salt water. The water in the foreground is Puget Sound.

Hoover Dam, USA, on the Arizona side. For emergency use in case of exceptional floods, to allow water to bypass the dam. There's an analogous spillway on the Nevada side. They've only been used once for real, in 1983. (They'd been tested in August 1941.)

Harlan County Dam, Republican River, Nebraska, USA.

Water falling into the Arizona spillway, Hoover Dam, in the flood of 1983. The first (and so far only) time the spillways have been used for real since they were tested in August 1941.