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Blue Mesa Dam

The 89th tallest dam in the world

118.9 m · 390 ft

Blue Mesa Dam is a 390-foot-tall (120 m) zoned earthfill dam on the Gunnison River in Colorado. It creates Blue Mesa Reservoir, and is within Curecanti National Recreation Area just before the river enters the Black Canyon of the Gunnison. The dam is upstream of the Morrow Point Dam. Blue Mesa Dam and reservoir are part of the Bureau of Reclamation's Wayne N. Aspinall Unit of the Colorado River Storage Project, which retains the waters of the Colorado River and its tributaries for agricultural and municipal use in the American Southwest. Although the dam does produce hydroelectric power, its primary purpose is water storage. State Highway 92 passes over the top of the dam. Blue Mesa Dam houses two turbine generators and produces an average of 264,329,000 kilowatt-hours each year.

Dam data from Wikidata (CC0) plus curated additions. Summary from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA).

More dams in United States

  1. Oroville Dam234.7 m
  2. Hoover Dam · Colorado River221 m
  3. Glen Canyon Dam216 m
  4. Ross Dam164.6 m
  5. Rampart Dam155 m

Other tall dams worldwide

  1. Rogun Dam · Tajikistan335 m
  2. Shuangjiangkou Dam · China312 m
  3. Norak Dam · Tajikistan300 m
  4. Grande Dixence dam · Switzerland285 m
  5. Sayano-Shushenskaya Dam · Russia245 m
  6. Oroville Dam · United States234.7 m
  7. Bhakra Dam · India225.6 m
  8. Hoover Dam · United States221 m