TVA's Nottely Dam

Sort of between Blue Ridge and Blairsville, GA, in Union County, is Nottely Dam. It is an earthen/rockfill dam, with a concrete gated spillway. Specs are 199 feet high and 3,915 feet long; power capacity is given as 15 megawatts. Construction spanned 1941-1942.

The spillway is interesting. With the lake still near winter pool, here is a lake side view of the spillway. We don't know what these types of gates are called, but we have seen them here and at Chatuge. They are smaller than your usual tainter gates, so there is more of them.

There was a walkway down the side of the spillway, so we hoofed it down and grabbed this shot of the floodgates and the spillway.

This is a closeup of the crane to operate the floodgates. There was one at each end of the "gateway".

The spillway ends rather abrubtly, dumping into the river downstream of the powerhouse. This would be an interesting one to catch spilling! One source gave normal summer pool as 1,779 feet.

The intake structure...

and a look down at the "powerhouse" and switchyard.