Blue Mesa Dam
| Blue Mesa Dam | |
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Blue Mesa Dam
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 Location of Blue Mesa Dam in Colorado
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| Location | Cimarron, Gunnison County, Colorado, USA |
| Coordinates | 38°27′12″N 107°20′04″W / 38.45333°N 107.33444°WCoordinates: 38°27′12″N 107°20′04″W / 38.45333°N 107.33444°W |
| Construction began | 1962 |
| Opening date | 1966 |
| Operator(s) | U.S. Bureau of Reclamation |
| Dam and spillways | |
| Type of dam | Zoned earthfill |
| Impounds | Gunnison River |
| Height | 390 feet (120 m) |
| Length | 785 feet (239 m) |
| Dam volume | 3,080,000 cu yd (2,350,000 m3) |
| Spillway type | Two radial gates feeding concrete-lined tunnels to a flip bucket and stilling basin |
| Spillway capacity | 34,000 cu ft/s (960 m3/s) |
| Reservoir | |
| Creates | Blue Mesa Reservoir |
| Total capacity | 940,700 acre feet (1.1603 km3) |
| Catchment area | 3,470 sq mi (9,000 km2) |
| Surface area | 9,180 acres (3,720 ha) |
| Power station | |
| Hydraulic head | 332 ft (101 m) |
| Turbines | 2 x 43.2 MW Francis turbines |
| Installed capacity | 86.4 MW |
| Annual generation | 203,411,938 KWh |
| Blue Mesa Dam bridge | |
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| Carries | State Highway 92 |
Blue Mesa Dam is a 390-foot-tall (120 m) zoned earthfill dam on the Gunnison River in Colorado. It creates Blue Mesa Reservoir, and is within Curecanti National Recreation Area just before the river enters the Black Canyon of the Gunnison. The dam is upstream of the Morrow Point Dam. Blue Mesa Dam and reservoir are part of the Bureau of Reclamation's Wayne N. Aspinall Unit of the Colorado River Storage Project, which retains the waters of the Colorado River and its tributaries for agricultural and municipal use in the American Southwest. The dam's primary purpose is hydroelectric power generation.State Highway 92 passes over the top of the dam. Blue Mesa Dam houses two turbine generators and produces an average of 264,329,000 kilowatt-hours each year.
The dam stands in an area where sandstone and shale overlay pre-Cambrian granite, schist and gneiss. It is situated at a narrows in the river valley where the Gunnison enters the upper reaches of the Black Canyon of the Gunnison. The dam has a volume of 3,080,000 cubic yards (2,350,000 m3) and the spillway intake structure has two radial gates. These discharge into a concrete-lined tunnel which in turn discharges through a flip bucket into a stilling basin.
The Curecanti Project (later renamed the Wayne N. Aspinall Project) was conceived in 1955, initially with four dams. It was approved by the Secretary of the Interior in 1959, comprising Blue Mesa Dam and Morrow Point Dam. Crystal Dam's design was unfinished and was approved in 1962. Plans for a fourth dam were dropped as uneconomical. The project was restricted to the stretch of the Gunnison above Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Monument (later designated a national park), a 40 miles (64 km) length of the river. Initially planned as a concrete dam, the project was changed to an earthfill design.
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