First hydroelectric dam

Hydroelectricity in Columbia River Basin

Shortly after Northwest pioneers established the initial towns and cities in the region, they started to capture the power of dropping liquid which will make electrical energy with their homes and sectors.

These were the first to ever tap the truly amazing hydroelectric potential associated with Columbia River Basin, a spot that includes components of Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, Utah, Nevada, and British Columbia. Its an area considerably bigger than the country of France.

Willamette Falls Power Station, 1889
Oregon Historical Community photograph
(mouse click to enlarge)

The T.W. Sullivan Dam at Willamette Falls in Oregon City was the first hydroelectric dam within the reduced Columbia Basin. It absolutely was built in 1888, 37 years following the founding of Portland.

Washington water-power business built the Monroe Street Dam on Spokane River in downtown Spokane in 1896, simply fifteen years following the town of Spokane Falls ended up being platted and seven many years after fire ruined 32 blocks associated with the downtown business district. In Spokane, as somewhere else in Northwest, hydroelectric energy and development had been linked.

The town of Idaho Falls built the very first hydroelectric dam from the Snake River in 1904. The nearby Minidoka Dam, a federal task, then followed in 1906. Growth of other dams inside Columbia and Snake basins proceeded at a fairly sluggish speed throughout the very early 1900s.

Hydroelectric development in the basin truly began in earnest in the 1930s aided by the damming associated with the mainstem associated with Columbia and Snake rivers. Initial, in 1933, had been Rock Island Dam near Wenatchee. Bonneville Dam accompanied in 1938. Building of dams on the Columbia and Snake streams continued to the 1970s, with all of the development occurring between 1950 and 1970.

These days you will find 56 dams built solely for hydropower when you look at the Columbia River Basin, and hydropower now supplies roughly 50 per cent for the electrical energy utilized in the Northwest. 74 per cent associated with power producing ability inside Columbia River basin is hydropower, 38, 670 megawatts of 52, 357 megawatts complete. The mainstem associated with the Snake River not just has even more dams than any various other tributary in Columbia Basin, it offers the greatest dams of every tributary in the basin.

Aside from the 56 hydropower dams, there are 77 multiple function jobs when you look at the basin offering hydropower production. Other advantages given by most dams include navigation for large barges; irrigation to facilities in more dry places; establishing areas for recreational activities; and flood control.

Whilst dams introduced tremendous benefits, in addition they posed issues on area. These are typically apparent physical obstacles to the salmon and steelhead that hatch into the tributaries and migrate through the mainstem Snake and Columbia towards the ocean as juveniles, and home to spawn as grownups.

The Council’s program requires permanent solutions to enhance seafood success at dams, such as for instance screens and bypass systems to channel juvenile seafood moving downstream from the dams’ turbines, area bypass methods, and pour for fish passageway.
Fish spill and/or bypass systems come in location anyway dams downstream of Chief Joseph Dam from the Columbia and Hells Canyon Dam in the serpent. Those two dams lack fish passage facilities.

The chart identifies america dams over the mainstem associated with the Columbia and Snake streams. Along with historic information, the chart defines the dams therefore the types of seafood protection services, including those for downstream and upstream fish passage.