Steve Wright
Roll On Columbia…
With those words, Woody Guthrie spoke to the physical and spiritual power of this river
- and in the decades since, that power, the power to bring us together in regional common
purpose - has allowed the dawn to prevail over the darkness.
Why is that?
Just as we are not Republicans or Democrats first, but Americans first when our country
requires us to set aside our differences and act collaboratively; the same is really true
in our regional allegiance to this river.
Because the Columbia River unites us all the way across this basin, it enriches us, it
enlivens us and it electrifies us.
We are really honored today to have with us today leaders from both parties who represent
all the members of the Pacific Northwest Congressional Delegation, who for 75 years have worked together
to ensure that the benefits of this powerful public waterway will be dedicated to the people
of this region.
Thos of us to worked to earn the title of trustworthy stewards of this river, have etched
in our minds the purpose of why we can to exist 75 years ago.
It is as envisioned by the forefathers of this fabulous hydro system that the public
waterways must and always be used for the public good.
I’d like to take you back for a moment to 1937 and what life was like.
I do not believe any of us can truly comprehend the agony of life for the Mid-western dustbowl
refugees who braved unfathomable adversity to claw their way across the American landscape
to this exotic place.
They came seeking water and when they arrived, it was water they got, in the form of one
of the largest and most powerful rivers in the world; only to be bludgeoned by a brutal
fact - that men and women cannot live by water alone.
It somehow had to be harnessed; its power had to be connected to their lives.
So, Woody Guthrie, whom we did hire way back then to roam to captured the desperation caused
by being so close, yet so far away, writing, "My eyes are crossed, my back's in a cramp,
try'n to read my bible by my coal-oil lamp.
Oregon State is mighty fine, if you're hooked up to the power line.
But I'm just a mile away from the end of that line."
And when you think of the words "back-breaking" labor which we really don’t recognize today,
I want to encourage you to try to absorb what life meant for people who carried gallons
and gallons of water every day and every night, because there was no electricity for pumping.
And for children forever imprisoned by the dead-end sentence of a third grade education
because their raw physical energy was literally critical to the survival of their families.
Now, these folks were quite conscious that their lives could have been different, had
affordable electricity been within their grasp.
And so at the insistence of Franklin Roosevelt this dam and the Ground Coulee dam were built
putting tens of thousands of citizens to work at the height of the Depression, and in so
doing he the comprised the Columbia River Basin.
The legislation that made all this possible was sponsored in a bipartisan, multi-state
fashion, a tradition that continues to this day.
The idea was revolutionary - electricity from large dams would be available for only the
cost to produce it.
And transmission would be built to deliver power to the people.
The same structures that would generate electricity and cause crops to thrive were also intended
to create a navigable river that would penetrate the heart of the Northwest to transport timber
and wheat and fruit and wool to the world's ports.
So out-sized in scale, so stunning was this vision, our lives in the northwest today would
be unrecognizable, with the sole exception of the majestic beauty that surrounds us,
without the laws that conceived this hydropower and transmission system.
Now, it didn’t come without fierce resistance that was blunted with even fiercer conviction.
And it was taunted as power for "jack rabbits and coyotes" because the population of the
Northwest was so small and so poor.
And it was denounced as lunacy.
Denounced that is until December 7, 1941.
We naturally think of war visually, on the battlefields of Normandy, or Iwo Jima.
But World War II was another kind of battle, a race for industrial mobilization.
President Harry Truman said, America would not have won the war without Grand Coulee
and the Bonneville Dam.
Power from the Columbia River produced the aluminum for sixty thousand planes that flew
in World War II and built one fourth of all the ships in that war that sailed for our
side, as well as for the Manhattan Project.
This is a place that distinguished itself on a global scale as a bastion of freedom,
built on the spirit of the men and women who invisibly make this system hum.
Sixty seven years have passed since the war ended, and in that time the public interest
has evolved, maintaining most of that original focus on development but adding to it the
strong Northwest ethic of love for and stewardship of the land and the water.
The vast array of economic and environmental benefits derived from this regional system
is probably well beyond even what FDR would have contemplated:
The potentially devastating floods that were averted because of working together collaboratively
across the Columbia River Basin including a model international partnership with Canada.
Some of the lowest electric rates in the country that incent job creation, attracting the industries
of tomorrow and leaving more money in your pockets.
A renewable electric power system that is the nation’s largest provider of electricity
producing zero air emissions including CO2.
In fact, without the Columbia River Hydro-system there would probably be fifteen, think about
this, fifteen more coal plants in the Pacific Northwest.
Funding for one of the world’s foremost energy efficiency programs, helping to keep
bills low and the air clean.
Wind projects producing even more energy than Bonneville Dam itself, located not coincidentally
within a hundred miles from here.
A system that is owned by the public and accountable to you and our retail utility customers who
are our partners in delivering this not-for-profit power to the people persist in keeping us
honest on this point every single day.
Oh and by the way, there’s something else that’s really unique.
And as promised by President Roosevelt himself, and you heard it here today, an infrastructure
investment that has been fully repaid to the U.S. Treasury, with interest.
All of these things are made possible by this huge
resilient and life sustaining river and we must nurture her capacity to serve generations
to come.
All of these things are brought to you by a cadra of public servants in the true sense
of those words: people who find their work to be meaningful and important because they
know it’s about serving their friends, their neighbors, their relatives, only on a regional
scale.
So countless people were emancipated from the grip of poverty, freedom was secured,
lives were saved, our quality of life has been enhanced and our air is the cleanest
in the nation.
What could possibly tug at our conscience in the shadow of those accomplishments?
Well, the development of this river has exacted a cost.
A cost in terms of the native fish and wildlife that inhabited the river’s reach.
And a cost to cultural and spiritual life of the people who relied most on the river’s
natural bounty and received the least from the development of this system, the region’s
Native Tribes.
What has been done over the history of this river for the greater good should have been
greater still.
Today, with broad and bipartisan support, we seek to do better.
Just a few years ago and up the river a ways Terry Goudy Rambler of the Yakama Nation Tribal
Counsel expressed, through a veil of tears, that the mists of Celilo Falls would never
again be felt on her face but that she had real hope for the first time that we would
find a way to walk forward in partnership.
And Ron Suppah who’s here today then chair of the Warm Springs tribe said that we came
as adversaries and litigators, but we leave as partners.
That spirit of collaboration and partnership to solve problems is true to the vision that
is the foundation of this place.
Together we are beginning to right the wrongs.
The evidence is clear: the largest fish and wildlife restoration program in the world,
created together, has halted and is reversing the decline of salmon in the Columbia River
Basin.
We stand today at the rallying point for all who live in the Northwest.
It brings together the people of Oregon and Washington and Idaho and Montana, it brings
together the people of all races and creeds, all who call the Northwest home.
And now we look to the future.
We have something special, something unique, a river of opportunity.
Because of what we have nurtured and built together for all who live in the Northwest,
we are freer than others to dream great dreams as out-sized as the ones at the beginning
of this seventy-five year long chapter.
Then, we brought down the barriers that stood in the way of people's hopes to be able to
live a life free from poverty.
Today, we seek to go further, to bring down the barriers that separate economic success
from ecological health and unite them in common purpose.
Roll On Columbia.
Roll On.