Aguasabon River

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Aguasabon River
Aguasabon Gorge and Falls near Terrace Bay, Ontario.
Origin	Long Lake
Mouth	Lake Superior
Basin countries	Canada
Length	70 kilometres (43 mi)
Mouth elevation	183 metres (600 ft)

The Aguasabon River (IPA: /ˌɑːɡwəˈsɑːbɨn/) is a river in Thunder Bay District, Ontario, Canada. The river originates at Long Lake and empties into Lake Superior.

The Aguasabon is 70 kilometres (43 mi) in length, and plunges down 30 metres (98 ft) at Aguasabon Falls near Terrace Bay. The river follows fractures in the 2.6 billion-year-old bedrock, and the exposed rock is granodiorite.^[1]

In 1948, the Hydro-Electric Power Commission of Ontario, now Ontario Power Generation, diverted the waters of Long Lake to empty through the Aguasabon river into Lake Superior, rather than flowing towards Hudson Bay via the Kenogami River.

[edit] Aguasabon station

Aguasabon Station is a two unit hydroelectric power plant run by Ontario Power Generation.^[2] It generates power to support the Kimberly-Clark pulp and paper plant at Terrace Bay, Ontario.

In 1945, the Hydro-Electric Power Commission of Ontario began preliminary survey work for a planned hydroelectric facility in the Terrace Bay area. The commission received criticism from the cities of Fort William and Port Arthur, due to its location far from those communities, but the plan went ahead when the Long Lac Pulp and Paper Company founded a town on Terrace Bay and constructed a new pulp mill.

Construction of commenced in 1946 and the facility was operating in 1948. The development required five million hours of labour, a network of access roads, and the erection of 25 buildings including staff housing, a hospital, administration office, pump house, machine shops and laundry. The dam enlarged Hays Lake to five hundred times its original size, and forced the relocation of Ontario Highway 17, requiring a new bridge be constructed.^[3]