Commerce
The third benefit from damming the Columbia was a little unexpected to me, as I don't think of the Columbia as a navigable river. I don't know why I don't think of it that way. It's just not what pops into mind.
It turns out that the machine version of the Columbia River is one of the most economically significant waterways in North America. The dams opened the Columbia and Snake Rivers to barge traffic all the way up to Lewiston, Idaho, making that beleaguered town 500 miles from the sea one of the nation's most significant international ports. The Columbia not only competes with the Mississippi. It surpasses it. According to a fact sheet from the Pacific Northwest Waterways Association, the Columbia was responsible for 46 million tons of international shipping in 2012, which was valued at $40 billion. Inland shippers moved 9 million tons of commercial cargo that year. The Columbia and Snake River are the number one export gateway in the United States for wheat and soybeans.
Part of this is that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers maintains a channel five feet deeper along the Columbia than it does on the Mississippi. This allows Columbia tugs to push barges twice as heavy as you'll find in front of a Mississippi tug. Consequently, shipping along the Columbia is far more efficient and less costly than shipping on the Mississippi. If you're a Denver manufacturer and you want your product to go to Europe, you can do it far more cheaply by putting your product on a train to Lewiston and barging it down to a cargo ship in Portland than you can by sending the same train to St. Louis to catch a barge to New Orleans. And that's even taking into account the extra distance your cargo ship will have to run to get through the Panama Canal.
All this benefit doesn't come for free, of course. I'll talk about some of the system's cost tomorrow.
Commerce
The third benefit from damming the Columbia was a little unexpected to me, as I don't think of the Columbia as a navigable river. I don't know why I don't think of it that way. It's just not what pops into mind.
It turns out that the machine version of the Columbia River is one of the most economically significant waterways in North America. The dams opened the Columbia and Snake Rivers to barge traffic all the way up to Lewiston, Idaho, making that beleaguered town 500 miles from the sea one of the nation's most significant international ports. The Columbia not only competes with the Mississippi. It surpasses it. According to a fact sheet from the Pacific Northwest Waterways Association, the Columbia was responsible for 46 million tons of international shipping in 2012, which was valued at $40 billion. Inland shippers moved 9 million tons of commercial cargo that year. The Columbia and Snake River are the number one export gateway in the United States for wheat and soybeans.
Part of this is that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers maintains a channel five feet deeper along the Columbia than it does on the Mississippi. This allows Columbia tugs to push barges twice as heavy as you'll find in front of a Mississippi tug. Consequently, shipping along the Columbia is far more efficient and less costly than shipping on the Mississippi. If you're a Denver manufacturer and you want your product to go to Europe, you can do it far more cheaply by putting your product on a train to Lewiston and barging it down to a cargo ship in Portland than you can by sending the same train to St. Louis to catch a barge to New Orleans. And that's even taking into account the extra distance your cargo ship will have to run to get through the Panama Canal.
All this benefit doesn't come for free, of course. I'll talk about some of the system's cost tomorrow.