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CELPIP Practice Reading: Reading for Information ID: #63136 Medium Niagara hydroelectric power basics

Read the following passage.

A. Hydroelectric power at Niagara started small. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the Niagara Falls area was home to many small hydro projects. The first major power plant on the Canadian side of the river, now called the Niagara Parks Power Station, drew its energy from the Horseshoe Falls and ran for 100 years. Water that had passed through the plant left by a tunnel about 2,200 feet long, 180 feet underground, and returned to the river at the base of the falls. Today the old station is open to visitors, who ride a glass elevator down to the tunnel.

B. The largest step came with a public project. In 1917, about 10,000 workers broke ground on the Queenston-Chippawa plant for Ontario Hydro, and soon afterwards they faced the Spanish Flu pandemic of 1918. The station began producing power toward the end of 1921. At 18 storeys high, it was then the largest hydroelectric station in the world. It was renamed Sir Adam Beck I in 1950 and has 10 units with a capacity of 446 megawatts. Its electricity helped power new household machines such as radios and washing machines, as well as the growing industries of Ontario.

C. The Sir Adam Beck stations now get additional water from the Niagara Tunnel. The world's largest hard rock tunnel boring machine dug it deep beneath the city of Niagara Falls. It is 12.7 metres wide and 10.2 kilometres long. The machine finished drilling in May 2011, and the tunnel was filled with water in March 2013. Gravity alone moves the water at 500 cubic metres per second to the Sir Adam Beck generating complex. Because of difficult rock, OPG and its contractor, STRABAG, agreed on a revised schedule in early 2009.

D. How much water the stations may use is set by an agreement between Canada and the United States. The 1950 Niagara Treaty requires at least 2,832 cubic metres per second to flow over the falls during the day from April 1 to October 31, and at least 1,416 at all other times. Water above these minimums is split equally between the two countries for hydropower. The International Niagara Board of Control oversees a control structure whose 18 sluice gates adjust the flow over the falls. It also oversees a floating ice boom that has been installed each winter since 1964 to reduce the ice entering the river.

E. Not given in any of the above paragraphs.

Decide which paragraph, A to D, has the information given in each statement below. Select E if the information is not given in any of the paragraphs.

 - 1. Whatever water remains after the required amount goes over the falls is shared evenly by the two countries.

 - 2. After passing through the first large Canadian plant, water went back to the river through a passage below the ground.

 - 3. Soon after work on the big public plant began, the builders had to deal with a serious disease outbreak.

 - 4. More workers were needed for the Niagara Tunnel than for the plant that opened in 1921.

 - 5. Nearly two years went by between the end of the digging and the flooding of the new passage.

 - 6. The plant was named after Sir Adam Beck because he paid for building it.

 - 7. Members of the public can now tour the earliest big plant on Canada's bank of the river.

 - 8. Problems with the ground under the city forced the tunnel builders to change their timetable.

 - 9. When it began operating, no other plant driven by water anywhere on Earth was bigger.

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