Power Company Officials
Power Company Officials: Background Information
The power plant includes a dam and reservoir that provide an adequate supply of cooling water. Your company’s engineers control the rate of water release from the dam back into the Snake River.
Normally, only relatively small volumes of water are released at any particular time. However, releasing large, controlled quantities of water from the dam is a standard way to prevent flooding. The last time such a large volume of water was released from the dam was 30 years ago. A fish kill was reported then, but the cause remained unknown. On that occasion, Riverwood and surrounding areas had experienced an unusually wet summer. The dam, constructed in the 1930s, incorporated the most current design thinking of that time. Since then, its basic structure has not been modified.