Fellow south east Washington resident here. This is so well said. I don't think people realize how interconnected these projects are with the whole region. Powe

Fellow south east Washington resident here. This is so well said. I don't think people realize how interconnected these projects are with the whole region. Power is only one piece of the equation. The Columbia Basin irrigation projects are a vast endeavor. The amount of food production that relies on the irrigation provided by these damns is HUGE (I work in Agtech and am regularly on many of these farms). Multiple towns have grown over the years on the banks of these rivers. Ripping damns down would mean either some other form of flood remediation or just abandoning the towns. And as an avid water skiier... the Columbia River is some of the best water skiing in the world (I've skiied many other spots). So there's a small deal about recreation as well. :D That may sound like an "over my dam body" pitch. It's not meant to. It's meant to augment the parent post. You have to talk about the whole picture, not just the part you get excited about when you have big interconnected things like this. I second going and visiting some of them. They're similar but different. Grand Coulee is a major testament to 40's large scale projects. I think Wanapum is cool because it shows that you can do a "public works" dam. And Dvorjak is pretty impressive as well, especially from a flood control/river management POV.