The new site, www.experienceblackriver.com, offers contact information for everything from canoe rentals to ice cream parlors and includes links to other sites that offer additional information about restoration activities at the park.
Following a series of meetings with local business people regarding their concerns, AmerenUE has also agreed to place newspaper and Web site advertising in St. Louis and Kansas City, beginning in the next few weeks. The ads will promote the new site and encourage vacationers to plan visits to these recreational areas. Clickable display ads to the site will also appear on the Google search engine.
In addition, AmerenUE continues to update its own dedicated Web site \- www.ameren.com/taumsauk\- created in early February to help the public stay up-to-date on the restoration of Johnson's Shut-Ins State Park and other affected areas. The Ameren restoration Web site also allows visitors to register to receive e-mail notifications whenever new material is added.
BACKGROUND:
AmerenUE is a subsidiary of St. Louis-based Ameren Corporation. Ameren companies serve 2.4 million electric customers and nearly one million natural gas customers in a 64,000-square-mile area of Missouri and Illinois.
Built in 1963, AmerenUE's Taum Sauk is a "pumped-storage" hydroelectric plant. It stored water from the Black River in an upper reservoir, built atop1,590- foot-high Proffit Mountain, and released the water to generate electricity when power is needed. The water flowed down a mile-long tunnel inside the mountain, turning turbine-generators to produce electricity. When power demand was low, the same turbines ran in reverse to pump water back to the upper reservoir. On December 14, 2006, the AmerenUE Taum Sauk Plant experienced a breach in its 1.5 billion-gallon upper reservoir that caused flooding in the Johnson's Shut- Ins area.
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