The Carters Dam was built by the Army Corps of Engineers in a gorge on Coosawatee River in northern Georgia. It opened in the early 1970s, after ten years of construction, primarily to control flooding in the river valley below. A re-regulation reservoir at its base serves as a lower reservoir for its pumped storage function. The powerhouse generates as much as 500 megawatts, has four turbines, two of which are reversible, enabling water to be pumped back into the upper reservoir. The dam is the highest earthen dam east of the Mississippi, creating the deepest lake in the state- 450 feet deep at the base of the dam. It is one of three pumped storage facilities in Georgia that use existing reservoirs along rivers, not isolated, off-stream storage reservoirs.