WINOOSKI — On Monday afternoon, Jon Clark was using a giant, claw-like machine atop the Winooski One hydroelectric plant to rake debris out of the river.
On a normal July day, the dam on the Winooski River experiences between 500 and 800 cubic feet of water per second, according to Mike Kanarick, a spokesperson for the Burlington Electric Department, which owns the plant.
But as he worked on Monday, it was clocking 10,000 CFS, said Clark, the department’s power production technician.
Two hours later, the dam was registering 14,000 CFS, according to Kanarickt. Based on weather forecasts, the hydroelectric plant is expected to record a maximum of 34,000 CFS Tuesday afternoon, Kanarick said — “a bit lower than” the high of 38,000 CFS reported during Tropical Storm Irene.
On Monday, all that water was bringing debris with it. Floating tangles of branches bobbed against the wall of the dam and swirled in the river’s eddies.
Clark was tasked with hauling that flotsam off of the dam’s intake with a device known as the Hydro-Claw. Too much debris could damage the plant’s intake racks, he said, which protect the turbines.
“If they’re too clogged up, they can actually implode and break,” he said. “So we always try to keep them clean.”
