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Grand Coulee: Opposition to the Dam Up in the Grand Coulee area there is no one to sell the power to except the jack rabbits and the rattlesnakes, and they are not amenable, as you know, to the ordinary processes of an electric meter. Francis Culkin, Republican Congressman from New York, 1937. Grand Coulee Dam was an impressive engineering feat that provided employment for thousands during the Depression, giving the people of the Moses Lake area a stable source of water and power. Nevertheless, there was opposition to its construction and inevitable social and ecological consequences. Some easterners disliked the flow of money to an area with so few people; others decried public power as "Socialistic dam foolishness" siding with private power opponents of the dam. In addition, the Grand Coulee project flooded ten towns, displacing about 3,000 people from their homes. The Powerful Grand Coulee Dam, 1981. Photo Courtesy of Bureau of Reclamation Members of the Confederated tribes of the Colville Reservation were among the many displaced by the rising waters of Lake Roosevelt. Not only did Indian people lose homes and lands along the Columbia River, including the ancient site of Kettle Falls, but they lost the all-important salmon. By preventing fish passage, the dam eliminated 1,000 miles of upriver salmon habitat. For centuries, salmon provided food and spiritual sustenance for upper-river Indian peoples. The tribes were not compensated for their lost salmon, nor for the power generated from the water running through their lands. In 1951 the Colville Tribes filed suit against the U.S. government seeking, among other things, a share of the power revenues from Grand Coulee Dam. Finally, in 1994, the government awarded $53 million to the various tribes for damage caused by the dam, plus annual compensation for power generation.   forward Table of Contents <> Photo Archive Oral History Archive <> Documents Archive <> Bibliography To Top of Moses Lake Exhibit