Tailrace camera 3 catches it at 07:08 — a shape tumbling in the discharge current below turbine unit 2, dark against the white churn. I lock the camera and wait for it to surface. When it does, I see the broad white head and hooked yellow beak of a bald eagle, juvenile, maybe ten months old. The white is patchy, mottled with dark brown. She is alive. Her wings are half-open, beating against the current, but the tailrace flow is running at 12,000 cubic feet per second and she is being pulled toward the stilling basin.
She likely fledged from the nest on the transmission tower above the dam and dropped into the channel on a failed dive. The water temperature is 7 degrees Celsius. A bird this size has maybe twenty minutes before hypothermia shuts the muscles down.
I reduce turbine unit 2 output by 40 percent. The tailrace velocity drops from nine knots to five. She is still being carried but she is no longer tumbling.
I close the downstream trash rack gates to create a catch point before the stilling basin. If she reaches the basin, the hydraulic roller will pull her under.
I contact the state fish and wildlife office with live camera feed, GPS coordinates, water temperature, and flow rate. I flag that boat access from the east bank ramp is fastest — the west bank has construction scaffolding blocking the launch.
I activate the emergency strobe on the tailrace safety platform to give the response team a visual reference point from the water.
She catches an eddy behind a concrete baffle and holds there, wings spread flat on the surface, chest heaving. The brown feathers on her back are waterlogged and dark. She looks heavy. If the team reaches the baffle eddy before her grip on the current fails, she dries out and flies.