Dams save environment while making power

Let’s have a look at the benefits of dams to human life with a special focus on Grand Coulee Dam.

It is the largest hydroelectric producing facility in the U.S. and provides enough electricity to power about 2 million households every year, 68% of all Washington state households. Please keep in mind too, that it is just one of 145 hydroelectric dams in the state.

Grand Coulee dam prompted the creation of the “U.S. Bureau of Reclamations Columbia Basin Project” which converted 670,000 acres (over 1,000 square-miles) of formerly arid wasteland into some of the most productive agricultural land in the world. Sales of the top 5 commodities in the Columbia Basin, apples, potatoes, wheat, hay, and onions, account for $2.2 billion in revenue. All of this resulting from the availability of irrigation water since the dams construction.

To those naysayers that claim dams harm the migratory salmon and fish populations...please explain to me this. Why is it since the construction of the dams have we seen near record salmon harvests on Idaho’s Clearwater River even after they have had to pass through eight dams on the Columbia and Snake Rivers to get there?

All dams provide excellent means of flood and streamflow control through the regulated release of runoff waters.

Perhaps most importantly to many people these days, guess how much CO2 hydroelectric dams produce? Zero. Yes, you read me right, absolutely none. Compare that to the vast amount of CO2 spewed into the environment by the production of solar panels and windmills, which only produce electricity when the sun is shining or the wind is blowing.

I hope that you can now understand why I am such a proponent of our dams.

Jim Hemrich

Colton