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Oregon Digital
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A. Early Tributary Development
Early in the 19th century, the Hudson's Bay Company, arriving from Canadian possessions in the north, began trading in furs. Soon the Company undertook a policy of over-trapping in the Wallowas and other mountains...
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settlement pressure, other Nez Perce leaders executed amendatory documents in 1863, ceding the Wallowa lands. Tribal leaders challenged their validity and nearly succeeded when white settlers were ordered to leave the Valley. However, the order...
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2.5 million acres of land for irrigation.' The Yakima Valley had a boom of its own between 1890 and 1910, when 5000 new irrigated farms sprouted. By 1902, it had the Northwest's largest irrigation project, sponsored in large part by railroads...
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2.5 million acres of land for irrigation.' The Yakima Valley had a boom of its own between 1890 and 1910, when 5000 new irrigated farms sprouted. By 1902, it had the Northwest's largest irrigation project, sponsored in large part by railroads...
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The river was uniquely suited to hydropower production, however. It is a relatively steep river, dropping an average of about two feet per mile (compared to Mississippi's six inches per mile). It flows in a solid rock channel suitable for dam...
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Lake, a 27-mile long irrigation reservoir. 30 Irrigation works take the water from there. The project first began irrigating fields in 1951. 31 It now irrigates about 560,000 acres with canals as big as rivers. It has a huge drainage system to...
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Administration. The agency was charged with marketing power output from the federal dams on the Columbia, giving preference to public customers. The BPA was "intended to be provisional pending the establishment of a permanent administration for...
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ultimately the Federal Power Commission granted a license over opposition. 46 On the mid-Columbia, Congress authorized Grant County Public Utility District to file a application for a license to build a dam at Priest Rapids. 47. That license was...
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Commission delegated the task to the Columbia River Engineering Board, which filed a 1959 report identifying three alternative plans for development and storage sites in Canada that could be operated to benefit both countries. The Commission also...
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("the intertie"), as long as the power could be called back if the Northwest needed it. A Southwest consortium put up the money, the treaty projects were built, and headwater storage on the Columbia more than doubled."
The treaty went a long way...
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Annual Distribution of Monthly Flow at the Dalles by Ten Year Blocks
Proportion of Annual Flow
Putting the River to Work
Month
Image caption: Figure 2.-Changing the shape of the hydrograph. |
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Change in Columbia River Hydrograph at the Dalles, 1879-92
Percent of Annual Runoff
Image caption: Figure 3.-The effect of storage projects on the river's seasonal flow. |
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2. The Snake River and the "Two Rivers" Concept
The Snake River, the Columbia's largest tributary, drains more than 40 percent of the surface area of the Columbia Basin, yet supplies only about 20 percent of the Columbia's flow. 62 Most of the...
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projects in the state were authorized: Minidoka in the Upper Snake Basin (1904) and the Boise Project in the Lower Basin (1906). Managing new storage water rights with existing surface water rights created new complications, and in the 1920s...
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formalized in an agreement between Idaho Power and the Bureau of Reclamation regarding development of the American Falls Project in the 1920s; it was adopted by the Idaho legislature in the 1970s and 1980s. At first as a matter of practice and...
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and time period for these leases. During the 1980s, the price was $2.75 per acre-foot, of which 75 cents was taken for administrative expenses and two dollars went to the lessor. 78
The Middle Snake River. The Middle Snake, the "second river"...
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when irrigation boomed, Idaho Power doubled its generating capacity through the development of the Hells Canyon Complex and other facilities in the Middle Snake.S3
The development of Hells Canyon raised major issues and extended debate: whether...
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for irrigation and flood control.88 In addition, high-lift pumps made it practical to take water directly out of the Snake River below Milner. Hundreds of thousands of acres of desert land also were developed for irrigation under the Desert Land...
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Some ratepayers saw no reason to accept this, however, and they sued the Company to force it to assert Swan Falls' water rights. In defense, the Company filed suit and won judicial recognition of its early Swan Falls rights.92 The court left open,...
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settlement. Indeed, the more significant developments may be emerging from the surface-ground water conflicts. For example, in Musser v. Higginson, the Idaho Supreme Court ordered the state Department of Water Resources to regulate pumping by...
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settlement. Indeed, the more significant developments may be emerging from the surface-ground water conflicts. For example, in Musser v. Higginson, the Idaho Supreme Court ordered the state Department of Water Resources to regulate pumping by...
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These plans and arrangements did not address many of the values that are driving the debate over the river now. Rather, planning meant development planning. Governance was reduced to the idea that the agency authorized to build a project also...
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uses. The notice reserves this quantity of water from allocation.102 Yet, the project's operations for hydropower, flood control, and salmon are governed by a separate complex of federal laws. Bureau of Reclamation projects on other tributaries,...
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1937 compromise. Subsequent proposals responded by including stronger state water-rights disclaimers, restricting the Authority's power over water planning and development, and finally limiting the agency's authority to hydropower alone.106 These...
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