They also generate electricty on Beaver and Table Rock at the bottom of the darn, when the water goes out the top the amount of power you get of it is zero, the same as taking a gas hose and pouring it the back of your pick up and saying I will pick it later and put it my tank. Table Rock and Beaver were rising at a higher than expected rate for 5 days before anything was done, at this time is when max generation needs to take place, 1st for flood control, 2nd for not wasting resources for Hydropower. Oh, is that priotry anymore?
Just to review the "primary purpose for lakes are Flood Control and Hyrdropower" once you open a flood gate you have thrown both of those out, now you are just pulling the yellow handle and trying to save a darn and have an emergency. Nobody plans to fail but failure to plan leads to failure. One policy here would have made this much less of a problem, IF YOU SEE A 2FT RISE IN LAKE LEVEL IN A 24 HOUR PERIOD GENERATE AT MAX UNTIL YOU SEE A DROP IN THE LAKE LEVEL OF 1FT. Instead there was no generation that was zero(0) up to the point the flood gates were open.
Take a trip to Beaver Town and explain to those people why there was no release of water through the turbines before the situation got to the point they had to take out thier bridge, thier campgrounds(source of income) and flood thier homes and by the way why we were burning coal to provide electricty when there was so much free water coming down we had to store it in their living rooms but were not using it to produce electricty.