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2 INTO THE BRAVE NEW WORLD With Bonneville already seeking outlets for power in the postwar period, it is very doubtful whether further hydroelectric development is essential in the immediate future. Flood control is a vital factor in some areas. But in every case where water is to be diverted for some utilitarian purpose, full consideration should be given to the possibility of damaging recreational resources.—Charles Stanton, Roseburg News-Review, August 24, 1945 F ew symbols more powerfully evoke the essence and meaning of the Pacific Northwest than salmon. Fisheries biologist Jim Lichatowich argues that salmon are survivors, “living through volcanic eruptions, ice ages, mountain building, fires, floods, and droughts.”1 The great salmon runs provided spiritual reassurance and sustenance for Native people, and for most of the 150 years since Euro-American settlement, salmon have served as physical manifestations of nature’s bounty. Shortly before his discharge from the United States Army, Richard Neuberger worried that the once abundant Columbia River chinook were in serious decline. The explanation for their decreasing numbers, he reasoned, were multiple: the extraordinary commercial catch in the lower river; pollution and industrial wastes that had choked salmon habitat; logged-oª hillsides and overgrazed grasslands; and dams and irrigation works that blocked access to traditional spawning grounds. Neuberger also noted the fluctuating and generallydownwardtrendof thefishcountpassingthroughBonnevilleDam between1938and1944.Butitwasnottoolatetosavethechinook,Neuberger 47 concluded, because Bonneville’s fish ladders worked and Northwest sportsmen were promoting programs to clean up urban pollution. The young journalist pointed out that the new dams proposed for the Columbia would generate “power at the cheapest rates on earth.” It was possible, he believed, for the water projects and salmon to coexist.2 Despite his occasional bouts of ambivalence, few Northwest writers surpassed Neuberger in praising the region’s bright prospects for the postwar era. First in order were the federal government’s Columbia River energy projects, especially the hydroelectric power generated at Bonneville and Grand Coulee dams, “the cheapest power on earth.” Low-cost electricity oªered promising opportunities for aluminum-fabrication factories, industrial employment that would turn metal into pots, pans, and appliances. The waters impounded behind Grand Coulee Dam and pumped into Banks Lake promised to irrigate vast acreages in the Columbia Basin where new farms would directly support an estimated 85,000 people. Neuberger predicted that it would require another 170,000 workers in nearby communities to process foodstuªs and provide essential services. And he would include Grand Coulee’s already significant contributions to the Hanford facilities on the Columbia’s sagebrush uplands.3 John Gunther’s best-selling 1946 book, Inside U.S.A., followed Neuberger ’s lead in celebrating the abundant and cheap power of the Columbia River. Bonneville and Grand Coulee helped create the region’s aluminum industry and played an important role in the development of the atomic bomb. Although the bomb was “a kind of apocalyptic, demonic child of the Columbia,” Gunther noted that the prospects for the new peacetime waterway represented the industrial and social future of the nation.4 Gunther’s observations mirrored regional boosters and developers who allied themselves with two powerful federal agencies, the Army Corps of Engineers and (to a lesser degree) the Bureau of Reclamation, to promote the huge engineering works on the Columbia River system.The end result of their eªorts—after more than four decades of sometimes frenzied construction activity—was a thoroughly rationalized and regulated waterway.5 The engineered river provided a water highway for barge tra‹c more than 400 miles to Lewiston, Idaho, powered turbines that produced electricity delivered as far as southern California, furnished irrigation water for thou48 postwar promise sands of acres, and cooled Hanford’s nuclear reactors. Its series of dams evened the annual flow of the main stem to the point that it no longer posed a threat of annual flooding. The Army Corps of Engineers, the government agency charged with river-basin surveys and drafting blueprints for the big engineering projects, was the principal federal bureau driving Columbia River development. Ralph Tudor, head of the Corps’ Portland District, told members of the Portland Rotary in August 1943 that the Columbia River was “the greatest national asset of this or any other nation.” He urged Congress to adopt a comprehensive engineering plan for the entire Columbia Basin and cautioned about “the fallacy of piecemeal development.” Tudor had every reason to believe that, “if congress so wills it,” the Umatilla Rapids Dam and the Willamette Valley...

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