The Tennessee Valley Authority opened up the spillways on most of its 49 dams this week to help draw down upstream reservoirs ahead of rain storms expected to dump anywhere from 3 to 5 inches more of rain on the region, starting this weekend.
TVA was spilling 115,000 cubic feet per second of water, or more than 860,000 gallons a second, through the Chickamauga Dam in Chattanooga on Tuesday in anticipation of two storm fronts expected in the next week. The spilling lifted the Tennessee River nearly 6 feet above its normal winter level in Chattanooga, and the heavy currents forced the shutdown of river navigation through the Tennessee River gorge just west of Chattanooga.
“We’re using this week when we are having mostly dry weather to recover some of our storage on our tributary system,” James Everett, manager of TVA’s River Forecast Center, said Tuesday. “When the rains start coming in Friday and Saturday, we’ll start holding back water at these dams and use them to help limit any flooding during the heavy rains we are expecting this weekend and again early next week.”
Staff Photo by Robin Rudd/ With Chickamauga Dam in the background waves splash over rocks along a flooded path that leads down from the Tennessee Riverwalk to the river. Heavy rains are expected this weekend, so TVA is spilling water through Chickamauga Dam, on January 7, 2020, in preparation for possible area flooding.The Army Corps of Engineers, which controls the locks and helps regulate river navigation on America’s inland waterway system, limited the Tennessee River to barge traffic west of Chattanooga on Monday when TVA increased the river flow. Everett said TVA expects to continue the spilling on its mainstream dams through Friday.
River barge operators are eager to get a reprieve from the rains that threaten to block shipments through Chattanooga. Last February when record rains fell in the Tennessee Valley, the Tennessee River in Chattanooga was shut down for weeks.