Libby
Kootenai River
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Libby Dam - Koocanusa Lake behind
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Libby Dam on the Kootenai River |
Cute! |
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City of Eagles |
Ohio friends Gene and Anita |
The Kootenai River is one of the major rivers that feeds into the Columbia River that runs along the Washington/Oregon border; it finally empties into the Pacific Ocean close to Portland, OR. It has its beginning in Canada and until the Libby Dam was built in 1972, it caused major flooding every Spring. Three years after the dam was finished, the power generation portion was completed and began to generate electricity. It has the capacity of 600 megawatts which is about equal to one of the coal generation plants in Texas.
The dam is unique and is called a 'straight-axis, concrete gravity' dam. The top of the dam is a straight line instead of being curved like most large dams. The 'concrete gravity' dam means that the weight of the dam itself holds back all the water in the lake. The dam contains 7.6 million tons of concrete and could pave a road from Libby, MT to Washington DC, 2290 miles.
The lake that is formed by the dam is called Lake Koocanusa a name created by taking part of the river name, Kootenai, part of Canada and part of USA. The lake if 90 miles long and is 370 ft deep at its deepest.
The dam has another unique feature in that they can adjust plates on the lake side of the dam to control the depth of the water that is flowing through the dam and power plant. If they want to cool off the water downstream of the dam, they can move plates so the water is coming from the bottom of the dam, therefore being much colder. By controlling the temperature of the river they are able to make sure the river is a great river for the production of trophy size trout. People come from all over to fish the great Kootenai River.