Grand River Dam Authority, a Partner and Employer at MidAmerica Industrial Park

GRDA's Dan Sullivan joins us to talk more about GRDA and the partnership with MidAmerica. The Grand River Dam Authority (GRDA) is a state agency whose mission is to serve as a "conservation and reclamation district for the waters of the Grand River." It carries out this mandate by controlling and storing the river's waters and by generating waterpower and electrical energy "to use, distribute, and sell within the boundaries of the District." Hydroelectric projects on the Grand River began with the Pensacola Dam. Construction was initiated in 1938 and completed in 1941. The Grand River Dam, as it is also known, was the first hydroelectric facility built in Oklahoma and the longest multiple-arch dam in the United States. The dam stretches across the Grand River and creates the Lake O' The Cherokees (Grand Lake), a major recreational area with thirteen hundred miles of shoreline. The Robert S. Kerr Dam, originally named the Markham Ferry Project, is downstream from Pensacola, just north of Locust Grove. Constructed between 1958 and 1964, the Kerr Dam created Lake Hudson, a twelve-thousand-acre lake with two hundred miles of shoreline. Visitors to the Robert S. Kerr site will also find the Energy Control Center, home of the GRDA's System Operations Center. The third and final hydroelectric facility under the GRDA is the Salina Pumped Storage Project along the Saline Creek, southeast of Salina, Oklahoma.