Boaters on the Tennessee River will now see new “danger” signs on and around Kentucky Dam.
The recent construction of the bright red signage comes as part of the Tennessee Valley Authority’s Public Safety Around Dams project.
Harrison Strickland is the initiative’s program manager. He said the recent installations replaced decades-old signage around the hydroelectric dam between Livingston and Marshall counties.
“The signs that are out here, some of them [date back] to the 1950s… so over the years, weather events and high water and all that have just deteriorated the signs over time, lessening their overall effectiveness,” Strickland said.
The new designs feature larger text on a vibrant red background. Some of those signs closer to the dam also have pictograms to spell out dangers for people unable to read English.
Strickland said the new safety messages are meant to better communicate to boaters the potential dangers of the waters around the dam.
“Our goal with rolling out this new generation of signs is really to better catch people's attention, and better convey the information that we want people to learn about, or to know… about how to be safe around the dams,” Stickland said.
In addition to the signage, Kentucky Dam also has an alarm that sounds when generators start to pump water – creating dangerously strong currents – and a system for notifying anyone downstream when the dam’s spillways are about to release water.
Strickland said TVA’s public safety initiative around its dams is being implemented in the hope of saving more lives in the future – but he said the organization realizes this might require more than a revamp of signage.
“Forty-plus people have lost their lives recreating around these dams since 1998 alone, and so our goal is to make that zero going forward,” Strickland said. “The biggest message that we have to compete with is the complacency factor… generations of people's families have recreated around these dams, and it's very easy… to maybe not necessarily pay attention to the warnings and the signs that are here.”
Because of this, Strickland said the program is also trying to reach out and inform the community about how to be safe in the waters around the dams. He said that preparation starts before boats even get on the water.
“Making sure that all of your equipment is operating as it should… making sure that you have an adequate number of life jackets on board for everybody that's going to be there… those are things that we're wanting to kind of talk more about and communicate to people,” Strickland said.
For more information, visit TVA’s website to learn more about how to stay safe while boating on waters around dams.
