After several days of holding back millions of gallons of water from the recent heavy rainfall, PPL's Lake Wallenpaupack has filled to its capacity and began releasing water to the Lackawaxen River on Wednesday (6/28).

"We release water as a precautionary measure to keep the lake from reaching the level at which water would begin to overflow the dam," said Brad Piatt, manager of Peaking Power for PPL Generation, which owns and operates the Lake Wallenpaupack project.

Lake Wallenpaupack has been holding back water for several days since the current rainy weather pattern began last weekend. The lake is a valuable resource for flood control on the Lackawaxen and Delaware rivers because water that otherwise would flow into the rivers can be stored in the lake.

The controlled release began at about 3:30 a.m. and may be increased or decreased as required to keep water from flowing over the dam. The water is being channeled into Wallenpaupack Creek and will flow into Lackawaxen River. The effect further downstream on the Delaware River will be minimal.

PPL is keeping officials from downstream communities informed about water releases and lake level. Up-to-date information is available to the public through PPL's Web site at www.lakelevelppl.com.

PPL also has been operating the 44-megawatt Wallenpaupack hydroelectric plant at its full generating capacity to help manage the lake level, but water has been entering the lake from its feeding streams faster than it is flowing out to supply the power plant.

Lake Wallenpaupack has a surface area of about 5,700 acres and contains 38 billion gallons of useable water storage.

The Wallenpaupack project is a generating facility of PPL Corporation. Headquartered in Allentown, Pa., PPL Corporation controls about 11,500 megawatts of generating capacity in the United States, sells energy in key U.S. markets and delivers electricity to more than 5 million customers in Pennsylvania, the United Kingdom and Latin America. More information is available at www.pplweb.com.