STRUGGLE FOR A COLUMBIA BASIN AUTHORITY
Neuberger, Richard L.
Struggle For A Columbia Basin Authoritv By RICHARD L. NEUBERGER IN a 1,600-mile surge from the Canadian Rockies to the sea, the Columbia River booms the loudest power anthem on the North American...
...Development of the Columbia encompasses many benefits...
...This is like having 3 kitchens in one hotel—one kitchen for desserts, another for meat dishes, still a third for soup and salads...
...Twenty-five years ago a young New York State politician became aware of this fact...
...The proposal for a Columbia Basin Authority has not aroused as much national attention as either the fight to continue the TVA or to establish a Missouri Valley Authority...
...Although Grand Coulee is the biggest power project on earth, it was not for power alone that the great dam was built...
...Sen...
...Yet in terms of resources and regional -riches, the Columbia Basin Authority would be more extensive than both the other agencies combined...
...Struggle For A Columbia Basin Authoritv By RICHARD L. NEUBERGER IN a 1,600-mile surge from the Canadian Rockies to the sea, the Columbia River booms the loudest power anthem on the North American continent...
...Eight other dams are planned...
...These interests fear the spread of public ownership of electric power...
...Navigation is another phase of Columbia River development...
...This land will provide 30,000 fertile farms for returning soldiers...
...Mitchell faces a stiff battle, but he is a fighter...
...The region must develop new sources of employment and production...
...Mitchell is aware of this...
...Not until 1933 did the Federal Government commence to tap the power of the Columbia...
...Mitchell's words, "short-sighted commercial interests" already have started to oppose the Columbia Basin Authority...
...It is a comparatively new frontier...
...He will not abandon Bill S. 460 without putting up the struggle of his life...
...Bi11 S. 460, introduced in the U. S. Senate by 38-year-old Hugh B. Mitchell of the State of Washington, is the legislative vehicle by which the Columbia Basin Authority would be started on its journey...
...The U. S. Bureau of Reclamation handles the irrigation projects...
...Two dams have now been constructed, Bonneville and Grand Coulee...
...Hugh Cooper, builder of the famous Dnieperstory Dam, is conducting an intensive campaign for a Columbia Basin Authority...
...At the present time no less than 3 Federal agencies are concerned with the Columbia River development program...
...Rufus Woods, editor of the Wenatchee Daily World, life-long Republican and old friend of Col...
...One stream dominates it, the Columbia...
...One of its 18 generators equals the output of many entire dams...
...That evening he told a crowd of 2,500 people, "Coming through today on the train has made me think pretty deeply...
...Advocates of regional autonomy think that an organization patterned after the TVA should be set up as soon as possible in both the Missouri and Columbia valleys...
...Decisions would be reached in the Pacific Northwest and not in Washington, D. C, 3,000 miles away...
...The U. S. Army Engineers operate all undertakings associated with navigation...
...Sen...
...Such an Authority is needed for the overall development of this final American frontier...
...When you cross the Mountain States and that portion of the Coast States that lies well back from the Ocean, you are impressed by those great stretches of physical territory now practically unused but destined some day to contain the homes of thousands and hundreds of thousands of citizens like us, a territory to be developed by the nation and for the nation...
...The power policies of the Roosevelt Administration, begun by Roosevelt after Sen...
...Mitchell A Fighter Many observers believe that the reappointment by-President Truman of David E. Lilienthal as chairman of the TVA augurs well for the plans for both the MVA and CBA...
...The Bonneville Power Administration sells all hydroelectric energy...
...Jim Murray of Montana, prooonent of MVA, the young Washington Senator is a liberal...
...Riding down the Columbia River, he looked out the window of the Northern Pacific train taking him to Portland...
...But the trees are giving out...
...The Northwest needs such a life-saver when the shipyards and airplane plants start to shut down...
...it would take a long time to put a meal together under these circumstances...
...they are afraid that low-cost navigation on the Columbia and its tributaries will jeopardize profitable railroad and trucking arrangements...
...This one stream, draining the Pacific Northwest, contains more than 40 per cent of all the potential hydroelectricity in the United States...
...But these undertakings must be integrated...
...The function of the Columbia Basin Authority would be to plan the multiple-purpose resource projects of the region in such a way as to meet the challenge of the postwar period...
...Opponents of the Columbia Basin Authority claim that the agency would be a "super-state...
...Some Fear Progress In Sen...
...Most of the average people in the region now favor a Columbia Basin Authority...
...Lilienthal has been the spiritual leader of the gr#up seeking TVA-like agencies in other regions...
...No region is more susceptible to development than the Pacific Northwest...
...Power is not the only product...
...Mitchell has wisely pointed out that the CBA would be precisely the opposite...
...It is a compact, homogeneous area...
...Norris of Nebraska had crusaded for public ownership for a generation, helped to make the Northwest power-conscious...
...Grand Coulee Dam, a colossal fortress guarding the upper Columbia, is the greatest single source of power on earth...
...The development of the river has just been started...
...Much of it remains to be settled...
...It would decentralize power and sovereignty...
...The name of the politician who wrote these words was Franklin D. Roosevelt...
...Grand Coulee was constructed principally to irrigate 1,250,000 acres of arid land in the Inland Empire...
...Supporters of the Mitchell Bill include Republicans as well as Democrats...
...Policies followed in the next few years may shape the future of the region for a century...
...No section of America is more suited to a regional authority than the Columbia River Basin...
...Inhabitants of the Pacific Northwest—people in crowded seaports and on lonely stump farms—are now demanding that the vast and rich resources of the Columbia River be consolidated in a regional agency patterned after the Tennessee Valley Authority...
...Like Sen...
...Thus was the seed of the New Deal power policies planted...
...Sen...
...His reappointment constitutes an important endorsement of his policies by the new President of the United States...
...For half a century the Pacific Northwest has survived economically through the exploitation of its raw materials, mainly lumber...
...The Pacific Northwest," he says, "cannot be allowed to relapse into a mere agricultural colony of the industrialized East...
...Sawmills and logging camps must penetrate ever deeper into the mountain ranges in search of standing timber...
...In fact, power is not even its primary purpose...
...A Columbia Basin Authority, generating power and devising new means for using that power, would put thousands of people to work...
...But the people of the Northwest, speaking through their Granges and labor unions and civic organizations, have already indicated by resolutions and letters that they think the TVA type of agency should be established in their own region...
...As we were coming down the river today, I could not help thinking, as everyone does, of all that water running unchecked down to the sea...
Vol. 9 • June 1945 • No. 24
