Mississippi River Lock & Dam No. 2

Lock and Dam No. 2 is located along the Upper Mississippi River near Hastings, Minnesota and was originally built in 1907. The eastern dam portion is 722 feet (220 m) wide and has 19 tainter gates. A hydroelectric station that produces about 4.4 megawatts is owned by the city of Hastings, while the 110 by 600 feet (34 m × 183 m) lock is operated by the St. Paul district of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' Mississippi Valley Division. There's also a wide earthen dam on the western side of the facility.

Following construction, the original lock walls settled and began to lean out of alignment, so a replacement lock was built. It was finished in 1948. A rehabilitation phase ran from 1987 to 1995. In 2009, Lock and Dam No. 2 became home to the nation's first commercial, federally licensed hydrokinetic power facility, which is a partnership between the City of Hastings and Hydro Green Energy, LLC of Westmont, IL.

Text imported from Wikipedia article "Lock and Dam No. 2" and modified on July 23, 2019 according to the CC-BY-SA 4.0 International license.