US Reservoir & Lake Levels (TVA + Army Corps)

Informational only. Not for navigation, safety, emergency, financial, medical, or legal decisions. Check the official source before you rely on it.

Get current pool elevation, 24-hour change, tailwater and dam discharge for TVA and US Army Corps of Engineers reservoirs in one clean JSON/CSV, from official public government feeds (no scraping of private sites).

Who it's for: marinas, fishing guides, lake rental hosts, boating apps, newsletters, and anyone tracking lake levels on a schedule.

Input: two checkboxes, Include Kentucky Lake and Include Lake Barkley (both on by default), plus optional TVA site codes (e.g. KYDK2 = Kentucky Dam) and/or Army Corps CWMS series (e.g. Lake Barkley). Output per lake: source, site, series, observedAt (ISO 8601 with Central offset, e.g. 2026-10-16T21:00-05:00), observedAtLocal (e.g. Oct 16, 2026 9:00 PM CDT), poolElevationFt, change24hFt, tailwaterFt, dischargeCfs, historyCount, history (hourly readings inside the Hours window), note, error, qcStatus, qcNotes, sourceUrl, retrievedAt.

Notes: Army Corps pool series report elevation only, so tailwaterFt and dischargeCfs are null for those rows. TVA publishes only the last 48 hours. If a reading is missing at the source, history may have one fewer entry than the hours requested. A bad site code returns a row with the error field filled instead of failing the run.

Self-check: every row gets qcStatus (ok or flagged) and qcNotes. A row is flagged, not dropped, if the pool level is outside a plausible range, the newest reading is more than 6 hours old or in the future, any hour-to-hour change is over 1 ft, or the source returned an error. Filter on qcStatus = ok if you only want clean rows. sourceUrl is the exact official feed the row came from and retrievedAt is when it was read.

Pricing: pay per result.

No-code setup

You do not need to write code to get these readings on autopilot.

1. Run it on a schedule. In Apify Console, create a schedule (for example every morning at 6 AM) and pick this Actor. Guide: https://docs.apify.com/platform/schedules
2. Send results to Google Sheets. Add the Google Sheets Import & Export Actor as an integration after each run, or run it on its own schedule: https://apify.com/lukaskrivka/google-sheets
3. Zapier or Make. Use Apify's official integrations to send each run's results to email, Slack, a spreadsheet, or your own app. Zapier: https://docs.apify.com/platform/integrations/zapier . Make: https://docs.apify.com/platform/integrations/make Each run still bills per result the same way. All integrations: https://apify.com/integrations

Disclaimer

Informational only. Not for navigation, safety, emergency, financial, medical, or legal decisions. Check the official source before you rely on it.

This is an independent tool by Standard Work Co. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by any government agency named here. Agency names are used only to say where the data comes from.

The data comes from public government sources and is passed through as published, only reformatted. Government data can be preliminary, late, missing, revised, or wrong, and this tool can fail too. This output is not an official government record.

Provided "as is" with no warranty of any kind, including accuracy, completeness, or timeliness. You are responsible for checking the official source before acting on anything here. Liability is limited as stated in the Apify Standard Actor Contract for this tool.

Not for boating, swimming, fishing safety, navigation, flood, or emergency decisions. For current official conditions, check tva.com and water.usace.army.mil and follow posted warnings.

Data sources and credits

Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) lake and dam observed data: tva.com. Lake Barkley data: U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Corps Water Management System (CWMS) Data API, cwms-data.usace.army.mil. USACE does not endorse this tool.

U.S. government works are not subject to U.S. copyright protection (17 U.S.C. 105). Any copyright in this Actor covers only its code and documentation, not the underlying government data.