Columbia Basin Project

The Columbia Basin Project (or CBP) in Central Washington, United States, is the irrigation network that the Grand Coulee Dam makes possible.

After thirteen years of debate, President Franklin D. Roosevelt authorized the dam project with National Industrial Recovery Act money.

The Columbia River reservoir behind the dam was named Franklin Delano Roosevelt Lake in honor of the president.

In addition, the original vision of a social engineering project intended to help farmers settle on small landholdings failed.

[1] The original plan was that a federal agency similar to the Tennessee Valley Authority would manage the entire system.

[1] The Columbia Basin in Central Washington is fertile due to its loess soils, but large portions are a near desert, receiving less than ten inches (254 mm) of rain per year.

The area is characterized by huge deposits of flood basalt, thousands of feet thick in places, laid down over a period of approximately 11 million years, during the Miocene epoch.

Agricultural operations within the CBP's boundaries but outside the developed portion have for decades used groundwater pumped from the Odessa aquifer to irrigate crops.

[1] Hydroelectricity was not the primary goal of the project, but during World War II the demand for electricity in the region boomed.

The Hanford nuclear reservation was built just south of the project and aluminum smelting plants flocked to the Columbia Basin.

A new power house was built at the Grand Coulee Dam, starting in the late sixties, that tripled the generating capacity.

Advocates of remedial measures point out that such steps would still be better than the status quo, which has led to marked die-offs and the likely extinction[15] of several types of salmon.

[citation needed] The irrigation water provided by this project greatly benefits the agricultural production of the area.

Without Coulee Dam and the greater Columbia Basin Project, much of North Central Washington State would be too arid for cultivation.

[1] Critics describe the CBP as a classical example of federal money being used to subsidize a relatively small group of farmers in the American West in places where it would never be economically viable under other circumstances.