Norris Lake (Tennessee)
| Norris Lake | |
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| Location | Tennessee, United States |
| Coordinates | 36°08′N 84°03′W / 36.13°N 84.05°WCoordinates: 36°08′N 84°03′W / 36.13°N 84.05°W |
| Primary inflows | Clinch River |
| Primary outflows | Clinch River, Powell River |
| Max. length | 206 mi (332 km) |
| Max. width | 1.2 mi (1.9 km) |
| Surface area | 53.875 sq mi (137 km2) |
| Average depth | 75 ft (23 m) |
| Max. depth | 210 ft (64 m) |
| Shore length1 | 809 mi (1,302 km) |
| Surface elevation | 1,020 ft (310 m) |
| 1 Shore length is not a well-defined measure. | |
Norris Lake is a reservoir that is located in Anderson, Campbell, Claiborne, Grainger, and Union counties in Tennessee. The lake was created by the Norris Dam at the Cove Creek Site on the Clinch River in 1936 by the TVA for flood control. The dam was the first major project taken on by the TVA. The lake, dam and the town of Norris, Tennessee are named after George W Norris, who was a United States senator from Nebraska and wrote the legislation that created the TVA.
Norris Lake was created by the Norris Dam, which was the first project taken on by the Tennessee Valley Authority as part of the New Deal. Construction began in 1933 and the project was finished in March 1936. The dam cost about $36,000,000 to build. The dam is 265 feet high and expands 1,860 feet across the clinch river. Construction of the dam also created the nearby town of Norris which was created to house the workers and their families.
Norris Lake flows 73 miles up the Clinch River and 56 miles up the Powell River from Norris Dam. It has a flood storage capacity of 1,113,000 acre-feet and has 809 miles of shoreline and 33,840 acres of water surface with a maximum width of 1.2 miles and a maximum depth of 210 feet, which makes it the largest lake on a tributary of the Tennessee River and as of 2011 has an ecological health rating of fair. The TVA has also put a clean water initiative into place to keep the lake clean and litter free and the program is monitored by the Regional Watershed Office.
The lake has an average temperature of 55.1 degrees Fahrenheit in the spring, 72.2 degrees in the summer, 56.4 degrees in the fall, and 36 degrees in the winter. It receives an average rainfall of 4.6 inches per month in a year. The lake is about 1,000 feet above sea level depending on the fluctuation of the depth of the lake at any given time with an average inflow of about 1,500 to 2,500 feet above sea level and an average outflow of about 1,000 to 1,500 feet above sea level. It also has an average water fluctuation of about 46 feet.
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Wikipedia