River and Region: The Columbia River and the Shaping of the Pacific Northwest

Catalog description

This seminar will explore the crucial role of the Columbia River in the past, present, and future of the Pacific Northwest. Topics will include the lives and legacies of the indigenous peoples that Lewis and Clark encountered more than two centuries ago; the historic fisheries that attracted thousands of Chinese and, later, Scandinavian workers; the New Deal's epic dam-building initiatives beginning in the 1930s; the impact of the Manhattan Project's plutonium bomb development at Hanford Atomic Works in WWII; and the twenty-first-century server farms dotted across the Columbia Plateau. We plan to visit with local water managers, farmers, ranchers, loggers, Native American fishermen, and energy administrators, as well as elected officials and environmental activists, to examine the hydrologic, meteorologic, and geologic bases of the river's water and energy resources, and the practical, social, environmental, economic, and political issues surrounding their development in the Pacific Northwest region. The Columbia River and its watershed provide a revealing lens on a host of issues. A transnational, multi-state river with the largest residual populations of anadromous salmonids in the continental US, it is a major source of renewable hydroelectric power. (The Grand Coulee dam powerhouse is the largest-capacity hydropower facility in the US; nearly 50% of Oregon's electricity generation flows from hydropower; in Washington State it's nearly two-thirds, the highest in the nation.) The river provides a major bulk commodity transportation link from the interior West to the sea via an elaborate system of locks. It irrigates nearly 700,000 acres of sprawling wheat ranches and fruit farms in the federally administered Columbia Basin Project. We will look at all these issues with respect to rapid climate change, ecosystem impacts, economics, and public policy. We will begin…