Hoover Dam

The Hoover Dam was constructed to control flooding on the Colorado River and to generate electricity. As part of that function, it created a large lake that serves as a water reservoir and a recreational facility.

It's very difficult to answer questions like this because of the way the US power grid works. Power producing sites put power on the grid, and power consuming sites take power off the grid, and it's not really possible to track exactly what goes where. Think of it this way: the power grid is a big barrel full of water. Las Vegas has a pipe coming out of the barrel, and Hoover Dam has a pipe going into the barrel, but there are many other pipes coming out and going in. Finding out if a particular drop of water flowing through the Las Vegas pipe came from the Hoover Dam pipe would be difficult. The power grid is actually worse than that, because we could theoretically put some dye in the water, but we can't do that with power; an electron is an electron is an electron. That said: Las Vegas actually does not get much of its power from Hoover Dam, since the electric company serving Las Vegas is NV Energy, which owns its own power plants and does not operate the generators at Hoover Dam. NVE's own website states that 70% of their power generation for southern Nevada comes from natural gas fired plants, so at most 30% of Las Vegas' power would come from Hoover Dam (and most likely much less than that). Also, the US Bureau of Reclamation (the agency that operates the generators at the dam) does not list Las Vegas as a recipient of the power generated. They do list the State of Nevada in general (which gets about 23% of the power generated by the dam), but the only specific city in Nevada that's listed is Boulder City, NV.

Hears the short answer Lake Mead. :)

due to a very wet winter the water level in lake mead rose to flood level, the camp grounds and launching ramps where all under water. this took place in 1983

Yes, it is a very popular tourist destination.

8 miles

There seems to be no deaths occurring during concrete pouring, and contrary to all the rumours there are no workers buried in the dams walls.

Overall, the death toll for the dam was 96 workers.

45 square miles

Boulder City (Nevada).

Around 16,000 men and women, with an average of 3,500 and a maximum of 5,218. The average monthly payroll was $500,000. Approximately 112 people died altogether, 96 of them died on the actual construction site.

The Colorado river flows through the grand canyon which is very big. to be exact the Colorado river is 1,450 miles long!

Franklin D Roosevelt

In the event of such a disaster, the water would gush downstream. That would cause widespread loss of life and property, but Las Vegas is not in the path and would not be directly affected.

The answer there is more pressure on smaller dams which creates MORE electricity.

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Sorry but that makes no sense. The electricity generated depends on rate of flow and head available, not on dam size. In fact the higher the dam the greater the head (depth hence water-pressure at the turbine), though this can be increased still further by piping the water to a power-station situated further down the valley instead of at the dam foot.

A more useful advantage of a smaller dam is its smaller environmental effect.

Let's say the Hoover dam broke. This is difficult to imagine, given its thickness. No conventional bomb would have an effect on a dam like this. It is difficult to imagine even a nuclear bomb having an effect, unless it was an extremely powerful one and it were inside the dam at the time of explosion. But let's say that some sort of tremendous earthquake or an asteroid strike or some other natural disaster were to somehow crack it in halves. The first thing that would happen is that 10 trillion gallons of water would move as quickly as it could out of the lake and down the river in a huge tsunami of water. The Hoover dam is located in a desert area that is not hugely inhabited below the dam, but there are still some sizeable populations. Lake Havasu City, population 40,000, is about the biggest town in the United States along the river. Bullhead city, population 30,000 is also close to the dam. Needles, California and Laughlin, Nevada all have populations of around 10,000 people as well. Damages to the dam Where the water would do immense damage is in the lakes below Hoover dam. It turns out that below Hoover dam is another large lake called Lake Mohave, which is held in place by Davis dam, and below that is Lake Havasu, held in place by Parker dam. These are smaller lakes and smaller dams. For example, Lake Havasu only holds about 200 billion gallons of water. As the water released by the Hoover Dam moved through these two lakes, it would likely destroy them and their dams as well. That's where the real impact would be felt, because these lakes affect a huge number of people. The water in them produces hydroelectric power, irrigates farmland and supplies drinking water to cities like Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Phoenix and San Diego. The Hoover dam produces roughly 2,000 megawatts of power. Davis and Parker dams produce less, but together they might all produce 3,000 megawatts. That represents about one half of one percent of the total electrical power produced in the United States. If you eliminated a sizable amount of generating capacity like that, especially in that area of the country (near Los Angeles and Las Vegas, for example), it would definitely cause problems. The destruction of irrigation water supplies would also have a huge effect on farming in the region. Farmers in the Imperial Valley get most of their water from the Colorado River, and these irrigation systems would collapse. Prior to irrigation, the Imperial Valley was a barren desert. Today it is the home of more than half a million acres of farmland and produces more than a billion dollars in fruits and vegetables every year. There would be large effects as well from the loss of drinking water. For example, Las Vegas gets 85 percent of its drinking water from Lake Mead -- the lake behind Hoover dam. With the loss of water and the loss of power, Las Vegas would become uninhabitable, and that would displace 1.5 million residents and empty more than 120,000 hotels rooms and the casinos, bringing the multi-billion-dollar gambling industry in this city to a halt.

giving a lot of work

You should go do the Power Point tour. I think that's what its called. I've done it before and it is very intresting.

Around 10 Years.... The concrete used in this could build a highway fromLosAngeles to New York

Dams are typically built to retain water. Some manage or prevent water flow into certain areas (dikes). Dams are also built to be used for hydropower/pumped-storage hydroelectricity to provide energy.

The Hoover dam is rectangular and convex(bends out)