Rivers Reborn · Episode 4 of 12 · 17 min
Follow the Money: Who Profited From Cheap Power
Cheap dam power smelted the aluminum for Boeing's bombers and fed the plutonium works at Hanford. The episode follows the money: the 1939 Bonneville-Alcoa contract, the wartime arsenal, the Klamath Project's 225,000 irrigated acres, and the utility later called PacifiCorp that built the Klamath dams. Salmon and tribes subsidized all of it invisibly.
Who's who
- Henry J. KaiserIndustrialist who built dams, shipyards and wartime aluminum plants
Where it happens
- Hanford Site, WashingtonPlutonium works run on cheap hydropower
- Vancouver, Washington+2 more episodesSite of Alcoa's first Northwest aluminum smelter in 1940
- Klamath Project, Oregon and CaliforniaIrrigation project of roughly 225,000 acres
- Columbia Basin Project, WashingtonIrrigation project served by Grand Coulee
Timeline
- December 20, 1939BPA signs its first major power contract, with Alcoa.
- 1942Hanford site is selected.
- 1943Dam power begins feeding Hanford plutonium production.
- May 29, 1952First irrigation water flows in the Columbia Basin Project.
- 1962Iron Gate Dam completed on the Klamath.
- 2024The four lower Klamath dams are removed.
Still debated
The popular figure that Grand Coulee power made aluminum for one-third of wartime aircraft is widely repeated but not audited. The exact split of Hanford's power between Grand Coulee and Bonneville is less documented, and how much of the salmon loss was foreseeable remains the series' open question.