Watts Bar Lake: Facts & Figures

Watts Bar Reservoir is on the Tennessee River in East Tennessee. It extends 72.4 miles northeast from the Watts Bar Dam near Spring City to Fort Loudoun Dam in Lenoir City.

• Construction of Watts Bar Dam began in 1939 and was completed in 1942, just three weeks after Pearl Harbor and provided urgently needed electricity for the war effort.
• Watts Bar provides 722 miles of shoreline and over 39,090 acres of water surface.
• Watts Bar Dam is 112 feet high and stretches 2,960 feet across the Tennessee River.
• Watts Bar has one 60 X 360-foot lock that lifts and lowers barges as much as 70 feet from one reservoir to the next.
• Watts Bar has a flood-storage capacity of 379,000 acre-feet.
• The generating capacity at Watts Bar is 175,000 kilowatts of electricity.
• The lock at Watts Bar handles more than a million tons of cargo a year, and the reservoir plays an important role in flood control, especially for the city of Chattanooga.
  
  

Tellico Lake: Facts & Figures

Tellico Reservoir is located on the Little Tennessee River in East Tennessee. Tellico Reservoir was planned as an extension of nearby Fort Loudoun Reservoir. Tellico Dam serves to divert water through a short canal into Fort Loudoun, linking the two reservoirs together to help prevent flooding.

• Tellico Reservoir stretches 33 miles along the Little Tennessee River into the mountains of east Tennessee.
• Construction of Tellico Dam began in 1967 and was completed in 1979.
• Tellico has 357 miles of shoreline and 15,560 acres of water surface for recreation activities.
• Tellico Dam is 129 feet high and reaches 3,238 feet across the Little Tennessee River.
• Tellico has a flood-storage capacity of 120,000 acre-feet.
• Water from Tellico helps drive the four generating units at Fort Loudoun Dam, which has a generating capacity of 145,000 kilowatts of electricity.
• Several recreation areas, including boat ramps, day-use areas, fishing areas, and campgrounds, are available at Tellico. The lake offers excellent trout and bass fishing.

Norris Lake: Facts & Figures

Norris Reservoir in East Tennessee extends 73 miles up the Clinch River and 56 miles up the Powell from Norris Dam. It was the first dam TVA built, and is named for Senator George Norris of Nebraska, author of the legislation that created TVA.

• Construction of Norris Dam began in 1933, and was completed in 1936.
• Norris provides 809 miles of shoreline and 33,840 acres of water surface.
• The area around Norris receives more than 45 inches of rainfall each year. In the past, floodwaters on the Clinch River sometimes inundated areas hundreds of miles downstream.
• Norris Reservoir is an important component of the system TVA set up to reduce the risks of flooding disasters.
• The recreational use of Norris exceeds that of any other TVA tributary reservoir.
• Norris Dam is 265 feet high and stretches 1,860 feet across the Clinch River.
• The water level in Norris Reservoir varies about 23 feet in a normal year.
• Norris has a flood-storage capacity of 1,112,982 acre-feet.
• The generating capacity of Norris is 131,400 kilowatts of electricity.