10 Largest Dam in the World That You Must Visit

8) Oroville Dam

Oroville Dam is an earthfill embankment dam on the Feather River east of the city of Oroville, California, in the Sierra Nevada foothills east of the Sacramento Valley.

It is one of the tallest dams in the U.S. It serves mainly for water supply, hydroelectricity generation, and flood control. The dam impounds Lake Oroville, the second-largest reservoir in California. The dam was built by the California Department of Water Resources. Construction of the underground Edward Hyatt Pump-Generating Plant was finished shortly after the completion of the Oroville Dam. It is one of the largest underground power stations in the United States. It has three 132-megawatt (MW) conventional turbines and three 141 MW pump-generators for a total installed capacity of 819 MW. The Hyatt Powerplant is capable of pumping water back into Lake Oroville when surplus power is available.

 

Oroville Dam Statistics

• Height: 770 ft (235 m).
• Length: 6,920 ft (2,109 m).
• Dam volume: 77,619,000 cu yd (59,344,000 m3).
• Spillway type: Service, 8x gate-controlled.
• Reservoir Total capacity: 3,537,577 acre⋅ft (4.363537 km3).
• Catchment area: 3,607 sq mi (9,340 km2).
• Surface area: 15,805 acres (6,396 ha).
• Turbines: 3x conventional 3x pump-generators.

 

How to reach

• The dam and the lake are 75 miles away from Sacramento, and can easily be reached by road.