SHELBURNE FALLS, Mass. - Great River Hydro operates 13 power generating stations on the Connecticut and Deerfield Rivers, including one that's connected to the dam in Shelburne Falls. 

Director of business development and legislative affairs Brandon Kibbe said it's been a busy week of cleanup and restoration efforts but luckily, thanks to their systems in place, they haven't reported any safety incidents.

“When any New England resident turns on their lights, a portion of the electrons they're receiving actually come from our hydropower generators,” Kibbe said.

Kibbe said all of their systems are designed to pass large amounts of water during events like flooding.

“This is a dam that functioned exactly as designed, precisely how we wanted it to perform in a situation like this," he said. "This facility, what we call our Deerfield number three dam, is no different. As you can see here, we have a series of flash boards. When you look across the dam here, you can see there's some of those flash boards are still in place. And over here, you can see where the flash boards have essentially failed, but failed by design.”

Kibbe said the boards normally control the water level in the reservoir and how much flows into the generation system until levels gets too high. The boards and iron pins lay down to allow the water to pass, saving the reservoir from a flood, but Kibbe said more water doesn’t mean more power generating.

“In this instance, when the boards are down like this, we are going to generate a little less energy as a result," Kibbe said. "That's just the outcome of needing to do this. We're a hydro company, first and foremost. Obviously, our primary business interest on a typical day is the generation of renewable energy. But during events like this and generally speaking, our primary mission is safety.”

Kibbe said all of their systems functioned as designed and no safety incidents were reported during the latest storm. Once the flash boards are replaced, their system will be generating power as it has been for more than a century.

“These facilities have been performing like this since the dawn of commercial electrification and continue to perform like this today," Kibbe said. "No safety instances are good news, obviously. Our thoughts and hearts are with the people who have suffered property damage and have suffered other things associated with this storm. And certainly we're doing our best to support communities in that way.