Summersville Dam plays key role in Gauley Season, holds history

SUMMERSVILLE, W.Va. — Gauley Season participants are familiar with the Summersville Dam but many may not know the engineering and history that went into its creation.

Controlled releases of water in the Summersville Lake have created unique whitewater rafting conditions for the past 50 years. Summersville Dam Resource Manager Toby Wood said during a Friday ceremony a lot of planning goes into every controlled release.

 

“We know the flows for the whole weekend and what we’re going to let out each hour. We coordinate that with everyone on the river, especially from an emergency response standpoint. We put a lot of effort into having a protocol that everybody’s familiar with so we know how to run this dam when there is a river emergency.”

An estimated 2,800 gallons of water go through the dam’s turbines per minute. Summersville Dam holds the record as the second largest rock-fill dam in the eastern United States. It is 390 feet high, 2,280 feet long and helps form West Virginia’s largest lake.

According to the Robert C. Byrd Center for Congressional History and Education, the idea for the dam was first conceived when the 75th Congress passed the Flood Control Act of 1938. This allowed funds for several construction projects across the nation.

Despite this sudden rush of funding, Summersville Dam construction did not start for many years partly due to World War II. In 1960, excavation work started on a 1,900 foot diversion tunnel. The dam was completed in 1965 by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

In 1966, President Lyndon B. Johnson arrived alongside Congressman John Slack First Lady “Lady Bird” Johnson, Senator Jennings Randolph, and Senator Robert C. Byrd to officially dedicate the dam and Summersville Lake.

pamphlet from the ceremony showcases the construction process.

“Our valves, our equipment that was built over 50 years ago is still just like it was then,” said Wood. “So we’ve got manual switches and levers and gears. So it hasn’t changed much in over 50 years.”

The dam has two on-call operators from a privately-owned company. Gauley Season is especially busy for these workers.

“We’re always just pretty much letting out the flow that’s coming into the lake to maintain the lake pool,” said Wood. “This is just a unique time of year where we’re cranking those flows up for this economic impact.”

Operators are also continuously monitoring weather conditions for environmental factors that could affect the dam’s operations.

“Rainfall, storms, we have to balance all of that every week,” said Wood. “We look at the flows coming into the lake and what kind of inflow to we have and we go from there. The right kind of storm could alter it some, yes.”

The dam successfully held back around 42 feet of water during the historic summer of 2016 floods. Experts said had the dam not been in place, serious flooding could have occurred all the way to Charleston.





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