Grand Coulee Dam

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The Grand Coulee Dam The Grand Coulee Dam was considered the “Eighth Wonder of the World” when it was completed in 1941. The construction of this great dam helped the United States get out of a recession. It is the largest concrete object ever built. This dam has also reduced the number of salmon in the Columbia River greatly. Native American tribes, who once lived off the Columbia, were forced to move on and find a new way of life. This dam has caused a great deal of controversy, and the real question is whether or not the building of this dam has been beneficial. The Columbia River is one of the biggest rivers in the US. This river is over one thousand and two hundred miles long with a discharge of about 265,000 cubic feet per second at the mouth of the river. The Columbia drops almost two thousand and seven hundred feet from British Columbia to the Pacific Ocean. This large drop in such a short distance (compared to other major rivers) is what makes it so practical to build dams on it. There are eleven dams on the main stem of the Columbia River and many more on the tributaries. Some of these other dams had fish ladders installed during their construction. These ladders allow the fish to continue their migration of the river and permit them to spawn further upriver. However, the Grand Coulee Dam was much bigger than these said dams and it would have been a great deal more difficult to make. Yet, it still would have been possible to make a ladder as shown by Blaine Hardens book, “It was just money. If you build a dam, you could sure as hell build a fish ladder” (96). As said earlier, there was a possibility of making a ladder for the fish to travel up the dam. The Bonneville Dam was built at about the same time as the Grand Coulee Dam, but a fish ladder was installed. At the Bonneville Dam there were over 800,000 Chinook salmon that passed through in 2010.

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