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Show Santee River to Aid in Defense Hydroelectric Power Will Be Available Early In October. MONCKS CORNER, S. C. A slumbering river giant that meanders mean-ders across South Carolina to the sea will soon contribute its mighty strength to the national defense program. pro-gram. The river is the Santee, which reportedly re-portedly has the largest flow of any stream flowing into the Atlantic south of the St. Lawrence. The huge task of diverting the Santee into 250 square-mile reservoirs, which sprawl over five South Carolina Caro-lina lowland counties, is nearing completion. The Santee will provide its first hydroelectric power in October when the current electricity shortage short-age in the Southeast is slated to reach its peak. By next March the great, slow-flowing river will reach its capacity output 700,000,000 kilowatt-hours per year. Cost $50,000,000. The federal government has poured $50,000,000 into the Santee-Cooper Santee-Cooper project, which is administered adminis-tered by the South Carolina public service authority. Using WPA labor, the authority has thrown up 56 miles of earthen dams and dikes to create the two artificial reservoirs Santee lake and Pinopolis lake which will bottle and control the tremendous power generated by the river as it flows toward the sea. Santee lake covers 119,00 acres -and Pinopolis. 70,000. The basin area was cleared of timber and other obstructions at a cost of $10,000,000. For construction construc-tion of the giant powerhouse and other facilities of the project, PWA made available a loan grant totaling total-ing $40,025,000. Jobs for 13,500. The project has provided work for 12,500 men. One of the final construction con-struction phases, before actual diversion di-version of the river was started, was the construction of an eight-mile eight-mile spillway dam the world's longest across the river. Another important phase of the project was the construction of America's highest single-lift navigation naviga-tion lock to boost river craft from a downstream canal to the reservoir reser-voir level, which is 75 feet higher. This is expected to be an important link in the planned water route from Charleston to Columbia and Camden. Cam-den. Completion of the project is expected ex-pected to bring a boom to the area tributary of the Santee basin an area inhabited by 2,000,000 persons dwelling in small but potentially 'important industrial cities. The drainage area of the Santee and its lesser parallel, the Cooper, exceeds 150,000 square miles. |
