Wikipedia
Pyhäjoki is a municipality of Finland. It is located in the defunct province of Oulu, which was split in two regions; Pyhäjoki is part of the Northern Ostrobothnia region.
The municipality is located on the Gulf of Bothnia at the mouth of the river Pyhäjoki. It has a population of and covers an area of of which is water. The population density is . The municipality is unilingually Finnish.
Fennovoima, a Finnish nuclear power company, plans to build a nuclear power plant at Hanhikivi in the municipality. The power plant would be operational in 2020.
The Pyhäjoki (literally: "sacred river") is a river in Northern Ostrobothnia, Finland. It is long and the town of Pyhäjoki is located where it empties into the Gulf of Bothnia on the Baltic Sea.
The river originates in Lake Pyhäjärvi and flows generally north-northwest through the Pyhäjokilaakso basin, a lightly settled region in southwest Northern Ostrobothnia. Towns along its course are Kärsämäki, Haapavesi and Oulainen. It empties into the Gulf of Bothnia at the town of Pyhäjoki, dividing into two branches shortly beforehand. The drainage basin of the Pyhajöki is variously described as and ; its mean discharge is approximately .
The river has rapids and is used for rafting. Timber was formerly rafted down it, but like the other short rivers in the region, it could not support a major sawmill industry at its mouth. In 1979 the river still had a salmon run, but numbers declined and in 1993 the river was included in a salmon action plan (SAP) under which fry were introduced from the Torne River.
The element pyhä-, meaning "sacred", in the name of the river and of the lake where it originates, stems from Finnish paganism.