- Categories
- American Eel
- American Shad
- Lake Sturgeon
- Salmon
- Sea Lamprey
Project photos
Beauharnois Power Dam
The Beauharnois Power Station is capable of generating 1 911 MW at a maximum flow of 8 200 m3/s. The facility is made of three independant Generating Stations. There are 36 turbines in total, 26 of which are Francis Turbines and a further 10 conventional blade turbines. The construction of Generating Station number 3, the last one to be put in service, ended in 1961.
The Beauharnois canal brings water from Lake Saint-Francis to the dam. It is 24,5 km long by approximately 1 km wide for a maximum depth of 9m. In front of the dam the depth can reach 20m.
Starting in 1994, a number of studies on the migration American eels in the vicinity of the dam were conducted by MILIEU. From 1998 to 2001, a first eel ladder was designed and tested on the West side of the facility. It was officialy inaugurated in 2002, then was followed by a second one on the East side in 2004.
To this day, over 700,000 eels have used the facility at Beauharnois to migrate upstream into Lake St-Francis.