Columbia River

choi

Kirk Johnson, Power Struggle Is taking Shape on a Mighty River. New York Times, July 29, 2017.
https://www.nytimes.com/interact ... -privatization.html

Quote:

(a) "the country's largest networks of energy-producing dams created through five decades of 20th-century ambition, investment and hubris.

"Nearly half of the nation's hydropower electricity comes from more than 250 hydropower dams that were built on the Columbia and its tributary

(b) "Now, the Trump administration has proposed * * * a plan to sell the transmission network of wires and substations owned by the Bonneville Power Administration, a federal agency that distributes most of the Columbia basin's output, to private buyers. * * * Debates about government and its role in land and environmental policy are always highly charged. But perhaps nowhere could the proposed changes have a more significant impact than along the great river [Columbia] of the West -- fourth largest by volume in North America, more than 10 times that of the Hudson.  

(c) "The dams and the locks that make up Mr Wyatt's workplace were built by engineers who utterly transformed — or destroyed, depending on your point of view — what had been one of the wildest rivers in America.

"From the mid-1930s, when construction began on the Grand Coulee and Bonneville Dams, through the mid-1970s, when the last major dams were completed on two Columbia tributaries, builders set the standard for public works as tools of economic development. Coulee and Bonneville employed about 9,000 construction workers, and Coulee alone cost about $5.5 billion in today’s inflation-adjusted dollars.

"The dams blocked the river’s flow, creating a network of placid reservoirs. Irrigation canals spidered out, fostering one of the nation’s richest breadbaskets in the orchards and vineyards of Washington. * * *

"But development came with costs. Native American tribes saw their lands destroyed. Salmon stocks, already decimated by overfishing, were driven into further peril by rising water temperatures [by so called global waring]  and dams that made it harder for fish to move up- and downriver in their ancient cycles of reproduction.

My comment:
(a) There is no need to read the rest.

(b) Columbia River
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Columbia_River

Quote:

"The fourth-largest river in the United States [not North America] by volume, the Columbia has the greatest flow of any North American river entering the Pacific.

In 1792 "a private American ship became the first non-indigenous vessel to enter the river * * * American captain Robert Gray * * * named the river after the ship" Columbia Rediviva.

(i) Columbia Rediviva
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Columbia_Rediviva
(Laid down: 1773; " 'Rediviva' (Latin 'revived') was added to her name [originally: Columbia] upon a rebuilding in 1787")
(ii) Latin-English dictionary:
* redivivus (adj); etymology: from [prefix] red(i)- "ancient variant of re-" +‎ [adjective; feminine vīva] vīvus alive]; feminine redivīva): "restored to life"
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/redivivus

(c) "fourth largest by volume in North America"
(i) list of rivers by discharge
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_rivers_by_discharge
(in North America: St Lawrence River barely surpasses Mississippi River > Mackenzie > Ohio . Columbia > Yukon)
(A) Two more ways to rank rivers is by length and by drainage area. See (ii) right below
(B) Mackenzie River
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mackenzie_River
(map)
(ii) JC Kammerer, Largest Rivers in the United States. US Geological Society, US Department of the Interior, 1990.
https://pubs.usgs.gov/of/1987/ofr87-242/
(average discharge of month: Mississippi > "St Lawrence (--Great Lakes)" > Ohio > Columbia > Yukon

View map in
(A) Saint Lawrence River
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Lawrence_River
("The Saint Lawrence River begins at the outflow of Lake Ontario")
(B) Yukon River
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yukon_River