drifted through the air all around, glinting in the sunlight and settling like flotsam on the calm water.
“It takes three or four barges to make a tow!” Sam shouted above the noise, and went on to explain how the grain would make its way down the Snake and Columbia rivers all the way to the Pacific Ocean. Lewis and Clark traveled this same path in the early nineteenth century, but where the famed explorers navigated swift currents and treacherous rapids, modern vessels move through locks and dams and what is essentially a series of long, linear lakes. When journalist Blaine Harden boarded a tug to make the journey in the mid-1990s, his captain offered a sober prediction: “By the time you get to Portland, you are going to bebored shitless.”
The Snake River dams, and the placid lakes behind them, may take the thrill out of river travel. But they also say something important about the political power of grain. Because while the dams on the Columbia supply massive irrigation schemes and produce half the region’s electricity, water and hydropower were afterthoughts on the Snake. The four dams downstream of Lewiston were built to move cargo, and the cargo moving from Lewiston was grain. In 1945, awash in war debt, the United States Congress still deemed the transportation of Palouse wheat and barley a top government priority. It approved construction of “such dams as are necessary” to open up the lower Snake River to navigation, a massive infrastructure project that would last three decades and cost more than$4 billion in today’s currency. At a ribbon-cutting ceremony in 1975, Idaho governor Cecil Andrus stood on the docks at Lewiston and predicted that his state’s new seaport would “enrich our daily lives through international trade.” The export boom that followed proved him right, and also proved that wheat and barley can do more than get dams built: they can also protect them in a changing political climate.
Within a few weeks of the governor’s speech, rare fishes like Tennessee’s infamous snail darter gained protection from the recently passed Endangered Species Act, and began complicating dam construction across the country. This trend reached Idaho in the 1990s, when four varieties of Snake River salmon and steelhead, decimated by the dams and slackwater, were added to the endangered specieslist. The resulting “Salmon Wars” illustrate how grain continues to hold sway in national politics. Breaching the Snake River dams became a rallying cry for fishing and environmental groups, and for a time seemed a likely outcome in efforts to save wild salmon. But though the idea of dam removal was bolstered by favorable court decisions and support from the likes of Vice President Al Gore, it slowly faded from the discussion. Instead, the government spent additional billions of dollars building fish ladders and hatcheries and even physically moving fish around the dams. Sometimes the little salmon go by tanker truck, but more often they travel the same way that grain does: by barge.
A few “SAVE OUR DAMS” signs can still be seen in Lewiston and nearby communities, but the lettering is faded and they seem redundant. Hardly anyone on either side now considers dam removal likely. When I asked Sam about the controversy, he said simply, “Dams are still an important part of how we move product.” Sam struck me as a modest man, but that might have been his biggest understatement of the day: since Governor Andrus cut that ribbon in 1975, the Snake/Columbia system has become the third-busiest grain corridor in the world.
While multibillion-dollar dam schemes may sound extreme, they’re far from the only way that politicians support growing, shipping, and marketing the grass seeds we all depend on. The same economic and cultural forces that led the Romans to invent Annona, the “free wheat” goddess, still keep governments around the world in the grain business. State-supported enterprises from Russia and
“It takes three or four barges to make a tow!” Sam shouted above the noise, and went on to explain how the grain would make its way down the Snake and Columbia rivers all the way to the Pacific Ocean. Lewis and Clark traveled this same path in the early nineteenth century, but where the famed explorers navigated swift currents and treacherous rapids, modern vessels move through locks and dams and what is essentially a series of long, linear lakes. When journalist Blaine Harden boarded a tug to make the journey in the mid-1990s, his captain offered a sober prediction: “By the time you get to Portland, you are going to bebored shitless.”
The Snake River dams, and the placid lakes behind them, may take the thrill out of river travel. But they also say something important about the political power of grain. Because while the dams on the Columbia supply massive irrigation schemes and produce half the region’s electricity, water and hydropower were afterthoughts on the Snake. The four dams downstream of Lewiston were built to move cargo, and the cargo moving from Lewiston was grain. In 1945, awash in war debt, the United States Congress still deemed the transportation of Palouse wheat and barley a top government priority. It approved construction of “such dams as are necessary” to open up the lower Snake River to navigation, a massive infrastructure project that would last three decades and cost more than$4 billion in today’s currency. At a ribbon-cutting ceremony in 1975, Idaho governor Cecil Andrus stood on the docks at Lewiston and predicted that his state’s new seaport would “enrich our daily lives through international trade.” The export boom that followed proved him right, and also proved that wheat and barley can do more than get dams built: they can also protect them in a changing political climate.
Within a few weeks of the governor’s speech, rare fishes like Tennessee’s infamous snail darter gained protection from the recently passed Endangered Species Act, and began complicating dam construction across the country. This trend reached Idaho in the 1990s, when four varieties of Snake River salmon and steelhead, decimated by the dams and slackwater, were added to the endangered specieslist. The resulting “Salmon Wars” illustrate how grain continues to hold sway in national politics. Breaching the Snake River dams became a rallying cry for fishing and environmental groups, and for a time seemed a likely outcome in efforts to save wild salmon. But though the idea of dam removal was bolstered by favorable court decisions and support from the likes of Vice President Al Gore, it slowly faded from the discussion. Instead, the government spent additional billions of dollars building fish ladders and hatcheries and even physically moving fish around the dams. Sometimes the little salmon go by tanker truck, but more often they travel the same way that grain does: by barge.
A few “SAVE OUR DAMS” signs can still be seen in Lewiston and nearby communities, but the lettering is faded and they seem redundant. Hardly anyone on either side now considers dam removal likely. When I asked Sam about the controversy, he said simply, “Dams are still an important part of how we move product.” Sam struck me as a modest man, but that might have been his biggest understatement of the day: since Governor Andrus cut that ribbon in 1975, the Snake/Columbia system has become the third-busiest grain corridor in the world.
While multibillion-dollar dam schemes may sound extreme, they’re far from the only way that politicians support growing, shipping, and marketing the grass seeds we all depend on. The same economic and cultural forces that led the Romans to invent Annona, the “free wheat” goddess, still keep governments around the world in the grain business. State-supported enterprises from Russia and
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