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Comment by cwal37 | Hacker News Reader

Haha, no worries, and sorry if that came off as overly pedantic, I work in the broader industry and was still winding down from aggressively-reading-things-about-energy-mode.

Glad you found it interesting! One additional tidbit is that they have to keep the water level at the pools downstream of the intakes within 1.5ft +/- the historical mean. There's a bit more leeway than that over time, but they do typically hit the mark. It's quite the operation.

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Not at all! I just thought it was funny that I was accidentally still correct even though I totally didn't mean it that way.

Why does the water level have to be controlled so precisely in those pools? Is there some technical reason or is it another tourism related thing like turning up the waterfall's flow during the day?

Yup, mostly tourism/maintenance of flows, downstream concerns, etc. It's drawn up in a treaty between the US and Canada, I think the International Joint Commission[1] is in charge/involved. The International Control Dam is the key structure[2].

[1] http://www.ijc.org/en_/inbc [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Control_Dam

EDIT: Also, there's the St. Lawrence Power Project[1] at the Moses-Saunders Power Dam[2]. A similar cooperation with very different design. New York has the most hydropower in the eastern half of the united states by quite a lot.

[1] https://www.google.com/maps/place/Moses-Saunders+Power+Dam,+...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moses-Saunders_Power_Dam

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