Oroville Dam
| Oroville Dam | |
|---|---|
 |
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| Country | United States |
| Location | Oroville, California |
| Coordinates | 39°32′20″N 121°29′08″W / 39.53889°N 121.48556°WCoordinates: 39°32′20″N 121°29′08″W / 39.53889°N 121.48556°W |
| Construction began | 1961 |
| Opening date | 1968 |
| Dam and spillways | |
| Type of dam | Rockfill embankment |
| Impounds | Feather River |
| Height | 770 ft (230 m) |
| Length | 6,920 ft (2,110 m) |
| Dam volume | 77,619,000 cu yd (59,344,000 m3) |
| Spillway type | Service, 8x gate-controlled |
| Spillway capacity | 250,000 cu ft/s (7,100 m3/s) |
| Reservoir | |
| Creates | Lake Oroville |
| Total capacity | 3,537,577 acre·ft (4.363537 km3) |
| Inactive capacity | 29,600 acre·ft (0.0365 km3) |
| Catchment area | 3,607 sq mi (9,340 km2) |
| Surface area | 15,805 acres (6,396 ha) |
| Normal elevation | 935 ft (285 m) (max) |
| Power station | |
| Hydraulic head | 615 ft (187 m) |
| Turbines | 3x conventional 3x pump-generators |
| Installed capacity | 819 MW |
| Annual generation | 1,490 GWh |
Oroville Dam is an earthfill embankment dam on the Feather River east of the city of Oroville, California in the United States. At 770 feet (230 m) high, it is the tallest dam in the U.S. and serves mainly for water supply, hydroelectricity generation and flood control. The dam impounds Lake Oroville, the second largest man-made lake in the state of California, capable of storing more than 3.5 million acre-feet (4.4 km3), and is located in the Sierra Nevada foothills east of the Sacramento Valley.
Built by the California Department of Water Resources (DWR), Oroville Dam is one of the key features of the California State Water Project (SWP), one of two major projects passed that set up California's statewide water system. Construction was initiated in 1961, and despite numerous difficulties encountered during its construction, including multiple floods and a major train wreck on the rail line used to transport materials to the dam site, the embankment was topped out in 1967 and the entire project was ready for use in 1968. The dam began to generate electricity after completion of the Edward Hyatt Pump-Generating Plant, then the country's largest underground power station.
Since its completion in 1968, the Oroville Dam has allocated the flow of the Feather River from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta into the State Water Project's California Aqueduct, which provides a major supply of water for irrigation in the San Joaquin Valley as well as municipal and industrial water supplies to coastal Southern California, and has prevented large amounts of flood damage to the area – more than $1.3 billion between the years of 1987 and 1999. The dam has confined fish migration up the Feather River and the controlled flow of the river as a result of the Oroville Dam has affected riparian habitat. Multiple aims at trying to counter the dam's impacts on anadromous fish have included the construction of a salmon/steelhead incubator on the river which began shortly after the dam was completed.
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