Grand Coulee Dam
The Grand Coulee Dam is a significant hydroelectric dam located on the Columbia River in Washington State, constructed during the Great Depression and completed in the early 1940s. Initially proposed as early as 1920, plans faced delays due to political issues and funding shortages until construction began in 1933, following a push from President Franklin D. Roosevelt. The project was controversial, especially among Native American tribes who opposed the dam due to its adverse effects on fish-spawning areas and the flooding of land, including sacred burial sites. Despite local utility companies' concerns over federal control, the dam has become a crucial source of electricity, contributing to the economic development of the Pacific Northwest and British Columbia through job creation and tax revenue. However, the Grand Coulee Dam is also viewed critically by some who see it as an environmental disruption and a loss of cultural heritage for local communities. Its construction and operation have thus had profound and mixed impacts on the region's economy, ecology, and culture, highlighting the complexity of such large-scale infrastructure projects.
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Grand Coulee Dam
The Event Gravity dam on the Columbia River in Washington
Date Construction begun on September 8, 1933
The largest concrete structure in the United States, the Grand Coulee Dam generates an enormous amount of electricity and approximately one-half billion dollars worth of hydroelectric power annually. The dam also supplies the water for a large part of the arid western United States, and it created two artificial lakes, which are used primarily for stabilization, water reserve, and recreational purposes. The irrigating system made possible by the dam created arable land out of former waste areas.
As early as 1920, Washington State officials had studied the possibility of harnessing what was, at that time, the largely uncontrollable Columbia River, but these plans lay dormant for years because of both political feuds and insufficient state funding. Finally, in 1929 the U.S. Senate requested the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers study development possibilities. The ensuing report advocated building a dam on the Columbia River, but again real action toward construction was delayed, this time by the Depression.
In order to build the dam, officials had to deal with numerous problems. Native Americans were fervently opposed because they believed, correctly, that the dam would greatly harm fish-spawning areas and put a substantial amount of their land, including burial grounds, under water. In addition, state and local utility companies resented what they considered to be unfair federal usurpation of their potential markets. Nevertheless, President Franklin D. Roosevelt ordered construction to begin in 1933. Four government agencies were directly involved, as were the Canadian government and some local dispensers of patronage. The project grew even larger when, in 1935, Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes ordered an enlargement of the dam in order to increase electricity generation and provide jobs.
Impact
The Grand Coulee Dam has drastically altered and changed the lives and cultures of the people of the Pacific Northwest and British Columbia. On the positive side, it provides huge amounts of electricity, employment, industry, and tax revenues. Others see it as an unnatural, giant, concrete eyesore that was and is disastrous to local communities, regional autonomy, and wildlife.
Bibliography
Billington, David P., and Donald C. Jackson. Big Dams of the New Deal Era: A Confluence of Engineering and Politics. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2006.
Lowitt, Richard, ed. Politics in the Postwar American West. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1995.
Pitzer, Paul C. Grand Coulee: Harnessing a Dream. Pullman: Washington State University Press, 1994.