As you can see from the sign above, you must buzz in between certain hours only. Then someone will come out to meet you and give you the “lobby tour.” That means you can look through a pane of glass at the big GE turbines in the generating station, and the old control room that isn’t used any more…just in case you have never seen obsolete power plant technology. There’s a video and other stuff illustrating the history of the dam project, and that’s about it. Thank you for stopping by.
In days when we didn’t worry about terrorists wanting to blow up items of interest such as giant hydroelectric dams, one could actually walk on the floor of the turbine room. There would also be tours of the intake station. Heck, I even finished up my SCUBA diving certification on the rocks just southeast of the intake tower. Not close enough to be sucked in, obviously. But now these are all off-limits areas, as you can see by the menacing chain link fence.
By the way…does anyone think a chain link fence is going to deter Habib in his van full of explosives? No…these are “feel good” moves. Very little has been done in the way of real security since September 2001. The reason for that is our free society. Freedom always means vulnerability. That’s why it’s up to us to remain vigilant and proactive. How would you like to live in Israel, where bus or cafe bombings are frequent? It’s up to us whether we want to accept that kind of thing, because there are plenty of people who would like to make it happen over here. And perhaps that’s another reason for those chain link fences and restricted areas: to tell people like that “we’re on the lookout for you.”