Hot Dam!

Carol Greenberger
* A sizeable rapid existed below the confluence of the Tallulah and Chattooga Rivers.

Paddling the two miles down Lake Tugaloo to the boat ramp after boating Section IV of the Chattooga River gives you time to think. Time to daydream, time to ponder the universe, time to reminisce. Plenty of time...

As the child of an engineer, I have memories of visiting dams on any family vacation with a dam nearby. My Dad found these feats of engineering incredibly fascinating. Aside from the fact that this allowed my brothers, sister and me to say the word “dam” aloud in front of our parents, we were less than enthralled. Now however, I find myself curious about the building of the dam at Tugalo and what once lay beneath the still waters of the lake.

A moment for semantics and clarification. The dam is named Tugalo. The lake, however, is called several different names. Georgia maps and Georgia Power Company call the lake Tugalo. South Carolina maps and documents name it Lake Tugaloo, the same as the river below the series of dams. Locals refer to the lake as Bull Sluice Lake, and this is backed up by old Oconee County maps naming the road to the lake in South Carolina “Bull Sluice Lake Road.” For the purpose of this article I’ll be calling it Lake Tugaloo, as I am now a South Carolinian.

Stories abound that the Chattooga River’s original Bull Sluice and Sock’em Dog rapids were once downstream of Section IV, and are now under the lake. These names were moved to rapids upstream when the dam was erected. The river bottom drops steeply at the confluence of Bad Creek and the Chattooga, and this logically may have been the site of a rapid. A little farther downstream, Worse Creek also comes in on river right and a rapid may have existed there. Below the confluence of the Chattooga and Tallulah Rivers, a long rapid can be seen in the Georgia Power photograph of the dam construction.

* Workers were housed next to the dam construction site.

In his memoir, Sound Wormy, Andrew Gennett, a lumberman in the Chattooga River watershed in the early 1900s, reminisces about that area of the river. Surveyors “…in a sense of humor, named the streams just below Camp Creek ‘Bad Creek,’ ‘Wuss Creek,’ and ‘Wusser Creek.’ I remember that at the mouth of Wuss Creek, at a big bend in the river, there was a deep hole where the water ran sluggishly and placidly that was known as the “Deep Hole of Sock-in-Dog.” It was said to have obtained its name from an old Indian who ‘socked in’ his dog at this place and made him swim out.” It is not clear if this is the Sock’em Dog rapid thought to have been in that area, possibly at low water, but this recollection is one of the few written pieces of history to be found.

History does tell of the war in 1760 between South Carolina and the Cherokee that resulted in the destruction of most of the Lower Cherokee villages in this area. Following the Revolutionary War, settlers received land grants along the Tugaloo River in what is today Oconee County, South Carolina. The area under Lake Tugaloo seems to have been uninhabited by settlers and thickly forested.

In the early 1900s demand for electricity in Atlanta was increasing. Georgia Railway and Power Company officials saw the potential for power generation from the swiftly flowing streams in north Georgia and began to buy rights to the land surrounding them. Ultimately six hydroelectric power plants were built in a stair-step fashion along a continuous 28 mile stretch of the Tallulah and Tugaloo Rivers. The first dam at Tallulah Falls was opened in 1913. The Tugalo Hydroelectric Plant is about two miles south of the Tallulah Plant, just below the confluence of the Chattooga and Tallulah Rivers. Construction of the dam began in late 1917, but was soon halted due to World War I. Work was resumed in 1922 and the dam began producing electricity in 1923. The dam created a 597 acre lake with 18 miles of shoreline. The gravity concrete dam stands 155 feet high and spans 940 feet across the river. The plant has four generating units, producing a total of 45,000 kilowatts.

Dam construction played a big role in the economics of the area. Hundreds of laborers were employed, many living in small two or three room “shacks” constructed near the dam sites. Families accompanied many of the workers, and photographs show homey porches filled with potted flowers and vegetables. In the October 17, 1918 Clarkesville Advertiser, the local newspaper for Habersham, Rabun and Town Counties, a help wanted advertisement read “Wanted—to employ 200 laborers. Will pay $2.25 per day, board 50 cents per day. Apply to J.E. Harvey, Tallulah Falls.” Although it’s not clear if this help wanted ad was for workers on the dam or some other project, it does paint a picture of the times.

There are approximately 80,000 dams in the United States. Only 2,400 of these are used to generate power. About one-third of the dams are used for recreation, followed by stock or farm ponds, flood control, public water supply and irrigation. Worldwide, 20% of all electricity is generated by hydropower. Countries that meet almost all of their power needs with hydroelectricity include New Zealand at 75% and Norway at 99%. In the United States, 10% of all electricity comes from this source, meeting the needs of 28 million households. This is the equivalent of nearly 500 million barrels of oil. The first hydroelectric power plant in Appleton, Wisconsin was built in 1882 to light two paper mills and a home.

Creating hydroelectricity is virtually emission free, and the question of whether or not to use an existing dam for power is a separate issue from the controversy surrounding building dams in general. However, several undesirable environmental effects of hydroelectric plants do exist. The plants’ turbines can cause fish injury and mortality. Hydropower plants can cause low dissolved oxygen levels in the water and water temperature is also affected. Not surprisingly, many organizations have been formed to halt the erection of dams, as well as to “free the rivers” from current impoundment. Many aspects of dam building concern nature and river lovers. Damage to the surrounding areas from the actual construction itself is one such issue. Impact on a watershed’s many animal species during and after building a dam is a hot topic. River health itself is another point of contention. The flow of nutrients within a river system is restricted by a dam. Water stored behind dams tends to accumulate silt and sedimentation. Phil Garner, in an article in the Atlanta Journal & Constitution magazine about the Chattooga River, said “[Lake] Tugaloo, especially at low water resembles not a lake, but a long sand bar. Backed up behind a Georgia Power Company dam, the impoundment has filled in over the years with the sand and silt washed down by the wild river. For long stretches the water is only inches deep.” He concluded, “It was as though the river were slyly winning out over a hated obstacle and eventually would cut its own way once again.”

* Tugalo Dam circa 1922.

Another hot dam topic, gaining attention now in the Chattooga River watershed, is that of “whose water is it?” Inter-basin water transfers, diverting water from one watershed to another, are being contested across the country. Human water consumption is eight times greater than it was one hundred years ago. As Atlanta and other cities continue to grow, they look for new sources of water to augment their inadequate supplies. Recently, Habersham County in Georgia applied to the U.S. Corps of Engineers to withdraw 12.5 million gallons of water a day from Lake Tugaloo. The water would be diverted to the Chattahoochee Basin to “supply the citizens and businesses of that region with their present and future water needs.” The General Assembly of South Carolina passed a resolution asking the U.S. Congress to stop this request. The fights over water transfers will continue to escalate as world population continues to grow.

The two mile paddle down Lake Tugaloo led me in many “dam” directions. The research led me to new knowledge about hydropower, dam construction, some history of this area and water issues. I even drove down the three mile curvy dirt road to see the dam itself. I heard a few stories passed down to the grandchildren of men who worked on the dams. I read newspapers from the era and gazed at photographs that painted a picture of our community’s past. And though I still was not enthralled by dams themselves, I was fascinated by the role Tugalo dam has played in the history of the Chattooga River watershed.

* All photos courtesy Georgia Power Land Department Photo Archives.