Lot is a river in France. It is a right-sided tributary of the Garonne. It rises in the Cévennes mountains, flows west through Quercy, where it joins the Garonne at Aiguillon, and is 485 km long. Where it gives its name to the departments of Lot and Lot-et-Garonne.
The Lot was prone to flooding in winter and spring, and its upper catchment contains many dams, notably on the Truyère, which produce hydroelectric power of strategic importance to the French national grid. Turbidity may cause further changes in the flow of the 275 km of river that has been developed as an asset for tourism in the region. A major project to restore the navigability of the Lot River was devised by local actors in Decazeville and Cahors in the 1970s. It entailed the restoration of a number of locks and bypassing medium-high dams built at five locations along the former waterway.
Location of the Lot River
The course of the river (from the French site), showing how the river rises deep in the Massif Central.
In the late 1970s, several solutions were being considered to remedy the serious water shortages in the Lot River and thus allow the development of economic activities in the basin, including the construction of a dam at St-Géniez-d’Olt, which would be supported by the Entente Lot. (As early as 1935, when large hydroelectric power stations were being built on the river, a site on the upper reaches of the Saint-Geniez-d’Olt was envisaged, but this was rejected because of the less reliable subsoil and the Castelnau-Lassouts site was preferred).
The solution was finally to release water from EDF’s large reservoirs on the Lot-amont and Truyère arms, which, under an agreement between EDF and Entente, allow the Lot to be replenished from the lower reaches of the Entraygues-sur-Truyère (after the confluence of the Lot and the Truyère).
On its banks, wine from the Cahors and Vins d’Entraygues et du Fel regions is grown, and in the lower altitudes, plums in particular.
Upstream, east of the Mende, the Lot offers difficult white water in places. Further downstream, it becomes a canoeing river.
Around 1670, the royal finance minister Jean Baptiste Colbert built 14 locks between Cahors and Villeneuve. An old chateau of this type still survives in the Lausche.
