According to the Tennessee Valley Authority, since Sunday Kentucky Dam has been spilling 190,000 cubic feet, or nearly 2 million gallons of water per second. Nearly the same amount -- 165,000 cubic feet per second -- has been pouring over Barkley Dam, under the supervision of the Army Corps of Engineers.
TVA is working with the Corps of Engineers to help reduce the flood crest on the lower Ohio River, which is at minor flood stage.
Officials say that even with the massive discharge, the water levels on both lakes are expected to rise temporarily as both agencies carefully coordinate the timing of water arriving from dams upstream to avoid catastrophic flooding.
Kentucky Dam is the last of nine TVA dams on the 650-mile-long Tennessee River system. The river winds from Knoxville and Chattanooga, into Alabama past Huntsville, then northward through west Tennessee to Kentucky Lake.
Meanwhile, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers manages ten dams along the 688-mile long Cumberland River and its tributaries that feed into Lake Barkley from Clarksville and Nashville, and ultimately sourced in the Appalachians of southeastern Kentucky.
The Cumberland and Tennessee rivers are both tributaries of the Ohio River where they join at Smithland and Paducah.
(Photo: TVA Facebook page)
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