Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
coal or natural gas to generate electricity, the plant's boilers used 90,000 gallons of water
to produce steam. And to cool the plant's condenser, Georgia Power withdrew 5 million
gallons of Chattahoochee River water every hour, which was “four times as much water as
the entire city of Atlanta” used in a few hours, according to
Snap Shots
, the company's in-
dams after the 1920s droughts, but even shifting to black coal technology was risky and
manufactured potential risk, since the region could never escape its dependence on river
water to generate electricity for industrial transplants that brought jobs, and for a growing
consumer sector.
Everyday urban Georgians—in Augusta, Athens, and Atlanta—initially benefited from
an electrified transportation sector. Georgia Power, for example, got its start in the streetcar
business. During the Great Depression, as industrial customers reduced production sched-
ules and manufacturing output, utilities like Georgia Power and Duke tapped a new market
to generate revenue. Despite the state of the national economy, Georgia Power and Duke
Power launched campaigns to increase residential electrical consumption, a sector that had
always been considered secondary. Through a variety of merchandising, layaway, and in-
centive programs, southern utilities convinced women and men to electrify their homes and
to invest in electric irons, refrigerators, water heaters, and other home appliances. Residen-
utives helped generate customers, but the revenue only barely helped keep utilities afloat.
While company engineers completed the organic and fossil fuel projects that depended
on water to generate electricity, Georgia Power executives simultaneously acquired land
for potential dam and reservoir sites along the Chattooga River—a tributary of the Tugaloo
and reservoirs along the Chattooga River as the company originally had intended to do, the
Georgia Power Company shifted construction to the Piedmont in a decision that proved to
be a fortuitous choice for the company and the future Chattooga Wild and Scenic River.
The New South company also moved out of the mountains and into the Piedmont to diver-
sify geographically and to diversify the company's collection of generation facilities.
In addition to purchasing Chattooga River valley waterpower sites and completing the
Atkinson steam plant, the Georgia Power Company also turned to Furman Shoals and the
Oconee River to balance the company's energy mix. In 1929, the company began build-
ing this Piedmont and fall-line project—now known as Lake Sinclair and Dam in Geor-
gia's “Lake Country”—about four miles north of the state's old capital of Milledgeville.
In September, the company's president announced plans for a 3,000-foot-long and 90-foot-
tall dam to create the state's largest artificial reservoir (12,000 acres of surface area) and
Black Tuesday wiped out Wall Street in October, and the company newsletter made no
