TVA's Apalachia Dam

We grouped Apalachia with TVA's North Carolina Dams, but some could argue that it belongs with the Tennessee group. Apalachia Dam Road starts from TN 68 in Farner, Tennessee, and crosses the state line, which isn't marked, about the time you can see the diversion pipeline. The dam is only about 1000 feet from the state line, and the power house, about 7 miles downstream on the Hiwassee River, is well within Tennessee.

As we said in the trip report. this dam surprises you. A few miles downstream of Hiwassee Dam, it is your typical concrete gravity dam with gated spillway. It stands 150 feet tall by 1,308 feet long, so it is not a small dam by any means.

But you can't see even a glimpse of it until you drive under the pipe and around this dike, and then THERE IT IS!

Obviously, Appalchia is a diversion dam. Here is the HUGE pipeline coming right out of the dam!

We first used the word huge to describe the Santeetlah pipeline. We are going to have to fix that. Here is the van parked next to the pipe for a size reference. You can walk through the Santeetlah pipeline; this one you could drive the van through!

Another view of ther pipeline running down the top of its protective dike. It enters a tunnel just on the other side of the approach road.

Here is the small "substation" that supplies power to operate the floodgates, among other things. We believe that TVA does most of it's primary distribution at 161 KV, so that is why this is more than your simple "transformer on a pole" that you would see in a neighborhood.

We didn't get the Power House on the first trip, but finally snared it on a grueling quest of its own (report here). Pix are here.