trigger points<\/a> to guide how it manages water during the drought. The first trigger point was activated on April 27, and the second on May 11.<\/p>\n\u201cWhen we hit these trigger points, we have reduced the flows going downstream to the Roanoke River to help protect the water here at Smith Mountain,\u201d said Izzy Post Ruhland, an Appalachian Power spokesperson. \u201cWe have to hold this amount to help us produce power in emergencies when we have hot weather and other things of that nature.\u201d<\/p>\n
The company said it is unsure whether it will reach a third trigger point. If it does, Appalachian Power said it would have conversations and partner with the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality, as well as the Department of Wildlife Resources, to navigate how much water must be released downstream.<\/p>\n
Despite the reduced generation capability at the dam, Appalachian Power said customers should not see any impact to power service and that it won\u2019t affect power bills. That’s because of Appalachian Power’s ability to pull from the other sources of energy like wind, solar, coal and gas. <\/p>\n
They also urged boaters to use caution as the lake level drops. <\/p>\n
\u201cThere’s gonna be a lot of shoals that are out of the water right now that you don’t normally see when you’re out boating, there’s gonna be some that are still under the water but only slightly now.\u201d Dwain Beaver, an Energy Production superintendent, said.<\/p>\n
As drought conditions continue, Appalachian Power said it is dependent on rainfall to replenish the lake. <\/p>\n
\u201cOur fuel supply is what Mother Nature gives us; we can\u2019t order more coal, we can’t order more gas like in other places, we can\u2019t order more rain,\u201d Post Ruhland said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"FRANKLIN COUNTY, Va. (WSET) \u2014 Drought conditions are continuing to push down water levels at Smith Mountain Lake,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":654374,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[47],"tags":[192,79],"class_list":["post-654373","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-environment","tag-environment","tag-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/654373","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=654373"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/654373\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/654374"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=654373"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=654373"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=654373"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}