They could have done better with the Grand Coulee though..... It has no hatchery above the dam & there is a reason for it. Many countless hundreds if not thousands of runs of wild spawing steelhead and salmon were forever lost. -Atleast in the sense of the pure wild strains if we ever decide to build a hulk of a fish ladder or implode the GC the wild runs are gone forever. (-No, not gonna happen) The Columbia's rooting headwaters exist way up in the interior of B.C. Canada. This dam was so massive when it was constructed it was hopeless to think building a fish ladder would have worked effectively.Roosevelt Lake as it is called is backed up if you will, to just clear of the the Canadian boarder. That is nearly 150 miles of lake. If a fish ladder would have been constructed on the GC it was figured then that the young smolts and even the adults would have had a very difficult time finding their way up and down such a large body of non-flowing water. (including hatchery fish) Though, to me in hindsite it still seems like it was an afterthought for the builders, engineers and government at the time to have not considered making the Grand Coulee Dam smaller and with a fish ladder much like all the lower Columbia River dams. I think the dam's economic impacts may be overshadowed by the greater past, present and future losses of commercial and sport fishing & harvest in terms of total dollar figures. It was a large available food source at one time(much like farming -a commercial fisherman could argue with an E WA farmer -who ever is "up river" ultimately can screw the other "farmer") or could have been due to the sheer volume of fish. I guess now we have a trade off -cheaper more available power vs -cheaper and more numerous fish. It all evens out somehow....... -Damn it anyhow... no pun intended

God didn't "dam" it we did!
Atleast they got the record of dam(n's) in terms of size at the time for the Guiness Book of World --Blunders. I think that might have been an addtional underlining motive.