Serving Lincoln County for more than a century!
Serving Lincoln County for more than a century!
Stepping back from dam power
Just over a century ago, when William Howard Taft was president and I was a young woman, an entrepreneur named Thomas Aldwell started building a dam in the Northwest woods of the Olympic peninsula in Washington. The 108 foot-high Elwha dam became an early hydroelectric powerhouse, helping to fuel population and industrial growth related to activities as varied as forestry and ship-building.
Over the following decades more hydro-dams in the West were built. Mega-dams like Grand Coulee and Boulder rose across rivers, and the cost for electricity to users dropped sharply.
After our original inves...
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