Take a look at flume repair high over the Ocoee River

POLK COUNTY, Tennessee (WDEF) – Work is getting underway on repairing a flume at the Ocoee River Gorge.

The flume takes water from up river, runs along the ridges over the Ocoee, and then drops the water through turbines downstream to generate power.

And it boasts a view of the gorge that most of us don’t get to see.

***Did you know fact at the bottom of the story***

This flume is more than a hundred years old. Except for the times with rock slides damage it, water flows to the TVA power generating stations along the Ocoee.

Since this section was damaged by a bolder last November, the utility has been losing 10-thousand dollars a day in power generation.

The Ocoee plant manager explains the repair process and its not an easy fix.

Plant Manager David Falls explains the work to us.

“To be able to do anything with that we came in and stabilized the slope which essentially ended up tripling the amount of rock that was in the flume to begin with.”

The flume runs high above the river along the mountainside. Repair crews can’t get a crane above it..or equipment below it because of the riverbed.

“That was the only safe way to do it was to come in from the top, rappel down and they broke off with hand, by hand whatever they could with pry bars, and then they came in with some air bags to push the rock off and they used some BUMP, a non-explosive device to be able to pop some of it off as well. And then pinned some stuff that they decided could be safely pinned.”

The repair will include steps to keep another rock slide from causing more damage.
Construction had to be done to make the area safe and accessible for the workers.

“This decking wasn’t here, we added this decking and steps off to the side so that we could safely get off the side of the flume. We’ve added another set of steps on the other end of the flume where we could get in, to be able to get in equipment that we’re bringing up.”

TVA spokesperson Scott Fiedler told us “We’re going to spend about one point four million dollars putting this back to its historical standard, it’s on the National Historic list of places, so we’ve got to be able to put it back into its original condition.”

TVA says the complicated repair job may not be done before June.

***DID YOU KNOW

The Ocoee Flume wasn’t built by TVA. Both the #1 and #2 dams were built between 1910-13 for the flume scheme by the Eastern Tennessee Power Company. TVA bought the entire power system in 1939.

Rafting didn’t start on the river until TVA closed the flume in 1976 for repairs. But it became so popular, they negotiated with the locals to share the river with white water enthusiasts, and the rafting industry was born.

View from the Flume taken by Ashley Henderson