CROFTON, Neb. (KTIV) – The Gavins Point Dam in Yankton, South Dakota is most recognizable by its spillway gates, moving water from Lewis and Clark Lake to the Missouri River below, But did you know that it also provides power for tens of thousands of homes and businesses?
“Inside (the powerplant) we have three power generators, and each generator can carry about 11,000 cubic feet of water a second. And right now today, our discharge is around 26 or 28,000. We generate 120 megawatts continuous, and that’s approximately 100,000 homes and obviously businesses and agriculture and all that is interspersed in between there.”
Michael “Moose” Welch is the Operations Project Manager with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers at the Gavins Point Project. “The normal average daily discharge out at Gavin’s Point is 30,000 cubic feet a second and in the winter we’ll go down to 13,000 cubic feet a …