The newly enhanced site, www.ExperienceBlackRiver.com, now offers an easy way for businesses and other attractions to add information about upcoming events. The site also includes an extensive business directory, a list of major attractions in the area, Web site addresses and information for a range of organizations that support the region, contact information for everything from canoe rentals to ice cream parlors, and links to sites that offer additional information about restoration activities at the park.
Ads in seven regional daily newspapers and on major Web sites which began on March 26 and will run through July will promote the site and the fact that the area is "open for business" and ready for a great season in 2006.
Following a series of meetings with local business people AmerenUE offered to place the newspaper and Web site advertising in St. Louis, Springfield and Kansas City in Missouri and in Belleville, Ill.. The ads are promoting the new site and encourage vacationers to plan visits to these recreational areas. Clickable display ads to the site 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. Both www.ExperienceBlackRiver.com and the Ameren restoration Web site allow 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 atop the 1,590-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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