Dam, that's big.

April 28, 2005 6:01 AM

The Grand Coulee dam in northeast Washington state is the largest concrete structure in the United States. First conceived as a smaller dam, the idea of a large project won out and the Coulee's size was limited only by the fact that, if bigger, we'd flood Canada.

It wasn't until the New Deal philosophy of putting folks to work (even songwriters) materialized that the dam was given a green-light. The project, 30 years in development and 9 years in construction, was by all means a rousing success. Unless you were a displaced native. Or a fish.
posted by DeepFriedTwinkies (14 comments total)

well, yeah, and the resonant frequency of the dam was such that the whole thing came crashing down shortly after they built it. at one point it would shake back and forth, and people would walk around on it for kicks while it was shaking.... saw it on pbs!
posted by nervousfritz at 6:20 AM on April 28, 2005

Um. The Grand Coulee Dam still stands.

Are you sure you're not thinking of the St. Francis Dam?
posted by tss at 6:35 AM on April 28, 2005

Damn dams using up all the damn air.
/homer
'There are two very different sources of carbon dioxide emissions during cement production. Combustion of fossil fuels to operate the rotary kiln is the largest source - approximately 0.75 tonne of CO2 per tonne of cement. The chemical process of calcining limestone into lime in the cement kiln also produces CO2. This chemical process is responsible for about 0.5 tonne of CO2 per tonne of cement. Therefore, the manufacture of a tonne of cement releases about 1.25 tonnes of CO2 emissions into the atmosphere.'
posted by asok at 6:37 AM on April 28, 2005

Unless you were a displaced native.

People get displaced by reservoirs all the time. The Elan Valley hydro project in Wales displaced a lot of people and destroyed the manor houses of two peers.

The towns (entire towns!) of Enfield, Dana, Greenwich and Prescott were destroyed by the creation of the Quabbin reservoir here in Massachusetts.

It's a sad fact that hydro projects often displace some people, but it's for the benefit of many more people. Ethnic background doesn't matter-- it could and did happen to anyone.
posted by Mayor Curley at 6:42 AM on April 28, 2005

Ethnic background doesn't matter-- it could and did happen to anyone.

True enough. I wasn't trying to come off as pc let's all hate whitey on that. Simple fact of this particular project was that if you were an Indian living upstream you better know how to tread water or move. Everybody downstream was tickled.

Not to get all geosnobby, but I have to also point out that Coulee is way more fun to say than Quabbin. Coulee is the hidden splendor of forbidden pleasure and Quabbin is the resultant STD.
posted by DeepFriedTwinkies at 6:52 AM on April 28, 2005

The Woody Guthrie songs is really good. I love the opening line, "In Washington and Oregon you can hear the factories hum..."
posted by fire&wings at 7:09 AM on April 28, 2005

Major Curley - the link on the words "displaced native" explains just exactly why this was worse than other dislocations, and that the natives were systematically kept from any of the benefits of the dam - they were even still charged a great deal for the electricity, more than whites, nor were they given access to the cheap irrigation. This was legally their land, their reserve; natives who have lost land to much smaller dams have received annual compensation, but the Colville reservation has received none.

Dams are always a problem - my heart is still breaking over China's Three Gorges project. But this is an egregious case of lack of either compensation or even an attempt to understand the impact of this dam. There were no fish ladders! How stupid was that? I don't know much about salmon, and maybe they couldn't have survived in the lake that was created, but the government didn't even try.
posted by jb at 7:15 AM on April 28, 2005

"People get displaced by reservoirs all the time."

= = = = = = =

"Lewis: 'Do know what's gonna be here? Right here? A lake. As far as the eyes can see. Hundreds of feet deep. HUNDREDS of feet deep. Did you ever look out over a lake and think of somethin' buried underneath it? Buried underneath it. Well man, that's just about as buried as you can get.'

- - -

Mountain man: 'Now let's you just drop them pants.'"

- - -

(Cue banjo... fade to black)
posted by Mike D at 7:18 AM on April 28, 2005

Don't forget about the lazer light show on the dam. It's damn cool.
posted by Staggering Jack at 7:30 AM on April 28, 2005

I grew up in Seattle and we'd road-trip out to Grand Coulee every few years (eastern Washington can be freaking awesome depending on where you go.) I remember just being entirely awe-struck by the size of it; you really have no way of judging scale. You'd be 2 miles away and it looks like you could just walk a few feet and touch it, it's that big.

And yes, the laser shows are utterly badass. Controlled, at least back when I was a kid, by an Amiga.
posted by wolftrouble at 11:45 AM on April 28, 2005

There are similar ongoing issues in California with the Shasta Dam.
posted by homunculus at 12:17 PM on April 28, 2005

jb: There were no fish ladders! How stupid was that? I don't know much about salmon, and maybe they couldn't have survived in the lake that was created, but the government didn't even try.

Different time jb. Who could imagine that we'd let a river get so polluted it would be possible for it to catch fire? Or so polluted that you could walk across a body of unfrozen "water" in sneakers and not get wet?

In BC (and probably other places) they'd blast cliff sides to make room for roads and railways and just let the rock just fall wherever. If there was a water way below oh well.

Not much different than they are doing in W.Va. with the mountain topping.

There's some controversy about the light show up here; something about Canada having to spill water from our upstream reservoirs in drought times to give GC enough water to spill over during the show.
posted by Mitheral at 2:49 PM on April 28, 2005

In Guthrie's case, they seemed to have put folk to work.
Incidentally, it's the only time folk music ever made money without going electric at Newport in '65.
posted by The White Hat at 4:02 PM on April 28, 2005

It's a sad fact that hydro projects often displace some people, but it's for the benefit of many more people.

The World Bank, which finances many of the world’s large dams, has this to say about hydro dams. I quote the World Bank E.A. Sourcebook:

"Large dam projects cause irreversible environmental changes over a wide geographic area and thus have the potential for significant impacts. Criticism of such projects has grown in the last decade. Severe critics claim that because benefits from dams are outweighed by their social, environmental and economic costs, the construction of large dams is unjustifiable. The area of influence of a dam project extends from the upper limits of the catchment of the reservoir to as far downstream as the estuary, coast and off-shore zone. It includes the watershed and river valley below the dam. While there are direct environmental impacts associated with the construction of the dam (eg. dust, erosion, borrow and disposal problems), the greatest impacts are from the impoundment of water, flooding of land to form the reservoir and alteration of water flow downstream. These effects have direct impacts on soils, vegetation, wildlife and wildlands, fisheries and especially the human population in the area. The dam’s indirect effects, which on occasion may be worse than the direct effects, include those associated with the building, maintenance and functioning of the dam (eg. access roads, construction camps, power transmission lines) and the development of agriculture, industrial or municipal activities made possible by the dam.
posted by fold_and_mutilate at 12:43 AM on April 29, 2005