Misplaced Pages

#300699

45-661: The Glacier View project was proposed after an earlier proposal by the Corps of Engineers and the Bonneville Power Administration to raise the level of Flathead Lake by increasing the height of Kerr Dam at its outlet was rejected, following local protests. Located in a relatively unpopulated area, the Glacier View reservoir would have flooded lower Camas Creek and would have raised the level of Logging Lake by 50 feet (15 m), inundating much of

90-622: A 20-mile-long (32 km) reservoir. It crosses into eastern Bonner County in north Idaho between the towns of Heron, Montana and the town of Cabinet, Idaho . In Idaho, just before the town of Cabinet, the Clark Fork River is dammed again at the Cabinet Gorge Dam . The Cabinet Gorge Dam was completed in the early 1950s, and its reservoir extends eastwards into Montana. After passing the Cabinet Gorge Dam,

135-607: A drainage area of 25,820 square miles (66,900 km ). In its upper 20 miles (32 km) in Montana near Butte , it is known as Silver Bow Creek . Interstate 90 follows much of the upper course of the river from Butte to Saint Regis . The highest point within the river's watershed is Mount Evans at 10,641 feet (3,243 m) in Deer Lodge County, Montana along the Continental Divide . The Clark Fork

180-529: A permeable alluvial channel in the right abutment. The Bad Rock Canyon site would have been on the main stem of the Flathead and was also determined to have poor abutment rock, as well as alluvial deposits on the valley floor reaching up to 300 ft (91 m) deep. It would have flooded the Hungry Horse damsite, which was under construction, as well as Lake McDonald in the park. The Camas Road joins

225-702: Is 3.49 cents per kilowatt-hour; the BPA generated $ 4.72 billion in operating revenue in 2022. BPA now markets the electricity from thirty-one federal hydroelectric dams on the Columbia River and its tributaries, as well as from the Columbia Generating Station , a nuclear plant located on the Hanford Site in eastern Washington. BPA has more than 15,000 circuit miles (24,140 circuit km) of electrical lines and 261 substations in

270-467: Is a Class I river for recreational purposes in Montana from Warm Springs Creek to the Idaho border. It rises as Silver Bow Creek in southwestern Montana, less than 5 miles (8.0 km) from the Continental Divide near downtown Butte, from the confluence of Basin and Blacktail creeks. It flows northwest and north through a valley in the mountains, passing east of Anaconda , where it changes its name to

315-690: Is an American federal agency operating in the Pacific Northwest . BPA was created by an act of Congress in 1937 to market electric power from the Bonneville Dam located on the Columbia River and to construct facilities necessary to transmit that power. Congress has since designated Bonneville to be the marketing agent for power from all of the federally owned hydroelectric projects in the Pacific Northwest. Bonneville

360-483: Is one of four regional Federal power marketing agencies within the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE). The power generated on BPA's grid is sold to public utilities, private utilities, and industry on the grid. The excess is sold to other grids in Canada , California and other regions. Because BPA is a public entity, it does not make a profit on power sales or from providing transmission services. BPA also coordinates with

405-529: Is the designated marketer for 31 hydroelectric dams and the Columbia Generating Station a nuclear power plant at the Hanford Site . The dams are owned and operated by either the Army Corps of Engineers (21 dams) or the Bureau of Reclamation (10 dams), and have a maximum combined capacity of 22 GW. The Bonneville Project, named for the then-new Bonneville Dam , was established by an act of Congress that

450-608: The Blackfoot River experienced a record flood in 1908. Since the late 19th century many areas in the watershed of the river have been extensively mined for minerals, resulting in an ongoing stream pollution problem. Most pollution has come from the copper mines in Butte and the smelter in Anaconda. Many of the most polluted areas have been designated as Superfund sites. Nevertheless, the river and its tributaries are among

495-982: The Celilo Converter Station near The Dalles, Oregon to the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP) grid 800 miles (1,300 km) away at the Sylmar Converter Station in Los Angeles . The Northern Intertie crosses the Canada–US border in two locations at Blaine, Washington and Nelway, British Columbia and connects to two BC Hydro AC 500 kV lines and several lower voltage lines. Because BPA owns and operates transmission equipment and locations, its workers perform its own vegetation management . BPA uses helicopters to sling load maintenance workers inspecting and repairing power lines. The BPA

SECTION 10

#1732802598301

540-553: The North West Company explored the region and founded several fur trading posts , including Kullyspell House at the mouth of the Clark Fork, and Saleesh House on the river near the present-day site of Thompson Falls, Montana . Thompson used the name Saleesh River for the entire Flathead-Clark Fork-Pend Oreille river system. For most of the first half of the 19th century the Clark Fork river and surrounding region

585-463: The Pacific Northwest and controls approximately 75 percent of the high-voltage (230 kV and higher) transmission capacity in the region. 87 percent of the agency's sustained peak capacity (11,680 MW) is generated from hydroelectricity. BPA also maintains connection lines with other power grids . It connects to the California high-voltage transmission system by Path 66 , which consists of

630-716: The Sierra Club , Society of American Foresters and the Audubon Society . Public hearings were held in 1948 and 1949. Turnout at the 1948 hearings at Kalispell was influenced by extensive flooding then occurring in the Flathead Valley. Exploratory drilling took place in 1944 and 1945 at Glacier View and Foolhen Hill. The project was terminated by a joint memorandum between the Secretary of the Interior and

675-618: The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation to regulate flow of water in the Columbia River and to carry out environmental projects such as salmon restoration. Although BPA is part of the DOE, it is self-funded and covers its costs by selling its products and services at cost. The BPA provides about 28% of the electricity used in the region. BPA transmits and sells wholesale electricity in eight western states: Washington , Oregon , Idaho , Montana , Wyoming , Utah , Nevada , and California . Its minimum wholesale rate

720-676: The watershed of the Columbia River . The river flows northwest through a long valley at the base of the Cabinet Mountains and empties into Lake Pend Oreille in the Idaho Panhandle . The Pend Oreille River in Idaho, Washington , and British Columbia , Canada which drains the lake to the Columbia in Washington, is sometimes included as part of the Clark Fork, giving it a total length of 479 miles (771 km), with

765-813: The 19th century, the Clark Fork Valley was inhabited by the Flathead tribe of Native Americans . It was explored by Meriwether Lewis of the Lewis and Clark Expedition during the 1806 return trip from the Pacific. The river is named for William Clark . A middle segment of the river in Montana was formerly known as the Missoula River. The river was also referred to as the Deer Lodge River by Granville Stuart . In 1809, David Thompson of

810-821: The BPA Library discovered a collection of old films made by the agency and began posting digital versions of them on the agency's website. Included in the collection is the award-winning documentary "River of Power" which covers the Agency's history from its beginning to the present. The BPA gives its name to the BPA Trail in Federal Way , Washington , a walking trail built beneath power transmission lines. [REDACTED]  This article incorporates public domain material from BPA Fast Facts - Fiscal Year 2006 (PDF) . United States Government . Archived from

855-521: The Bonneville Power Act's anti-monopoly clause. The cheap price of aluminum from Alcoa helped aluminum sales grow in the post- World War II market. Overly optimistic estimates of future electricity consumption by BPA in the 1960s led the agency to guarantee some bonds for the disastrous Washington Public Power Supply System nuclear power project. Out of five nuclear power plants started ( WNP-1 and WNP-4 , WNP-3 and WNP-5 ), only WNP-2

900-547: The Clark Fork at the confluence with Warm Springs Creek, then northwest to Deer Lodge . Near Deer Lodge it receives the Little Blackfoot River . From Deer Lodge it flows generally northwest across western Montana, passing south of the Garnet Range toward Missoula. Five miles east of Missoula, the river receives the Blackfoot River . Northwest of Missoula, the river continues through a long valley along

945-560: The Corps to be difficult to develop compared to Glacier View, given the developed nature of the flooded area proposed at Paradise versus the relatively unpopulated Glacier View region. Other proposed dams were the Smoky Range, Canyon Creek and Spruce Park dams, none of which were built. Hungry Horse Dam was, however, completed in 1953 by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation on the South Fork of the Flathead. The Spruce Park reservoir to

SECTION 20

#1732802598301

990-597: The Glacier View project also mentioned the potential of the Middle Fork Flathead River for development, and projected a dam at Belton , with a 1,190,000-acre-foot (1.47 km) reservoir behind a dam developing 330 feet (100 m) of hydraulic head, for a potential generating capacity of 152 MW. As the Middle Fork forms the southwest boundary of Glacier National Park, any reservoir on the Middle Fork near Belton would necessarily flood portions of

1035-572: The Outside North Fork Road just to the east of the damsite. The Forests and Fire Nature Trail is just upstream from the site. The Logging Creek Ranger Station and the small town of Polebridge lie within the proposed reservoir. Within the park, the lower reaches of Camas Creek, Quartz Creek, Bowman Creek and Akokala Creek would have been flooded, along with most of Logging Creek and Logging Lake. Bonneville Power Administration The Bonneville Power Administration ( BPA )

1080-628: The Pacific Northwest. The agency's name was changed to the Bonneville Power Administration in 1940. Attempts to replace the BPA with a Columbia Valley Authority that more closely resembled the TVA were made in the 1940s and 1950s, but were ultimately unsuccessful. BPA's first industrial sale was to Alcoa in January 1940, to provide 32,500 kilowatts of power. This, and the following 162,500 kilowatt order, led to complaints of

1125-590: The Park Service to undertake the slaughter of most of these animals ... We cannot afford, except for the most compelling reasons — which we are convinced do not exist in this case — to permit this impairment of one of the finest properties of the American people. Drury went on to state that 19,460 acres (7,880 ha) of land would be flooded, including virgin Ponderosa pine . In order to show that

1170-617: The Secretary of the Army on April 11, 1949, but Mansfield introduced an unsuccessful bill later in the year directing the Corps of Engineers to proceed with the dam, stating that the dam "would not affect the beauty of the park in any way but would make it more beautiful by creating a large lake over ground that ... has no scenic attraction." The Corps of Engineers report on the project noted: The park lands that will be inundated and required for freeboard of 5 feet above normal pool elevation amounts to 10,175 acres (4,118 ha), or about 1 percent of

1215-563: The area was of recreational value, the Park Service constructed the Camas Creek Road through the area. The dam was opposed by the Park Service and conservation organizations on principal as an intrusion into lands that had been made inviolate by their inclusion in a national park, with about a third of the reservoir located on Park Service lands. The precedent established at Hetch Hetchy in Yosemite National Park

1260-694: The lower Clark Fork River. At Thompson Falls, about 100 mi (160 km) northwest of Missoula, the Thompson Falls Dam , actually a series of four dams that bridge between islands in the river, was built atop the falls in 1915. Next, at Noxon, Montana , along the Cabinet Mountains and the northern end of the Bitterroots near the Idaho border, the river is impounded by the Noxon Rapids Dam , completed in 1959 and forming

1305-537: The most popular destinations for fly fishing in the United States . Today, the Clark Fork watershed encompasses the largest Superfund site in America. As a mega-site, it includes three major sites: Butte, Anaconda, and Milltown Dam/Clark Fork River's Milltown Reservoir Superfund Site . Each of these major sites is split up into numerous sub-sites known as Operable Units. Milltown Dam was removed in 2008 at

1350-764: The northeast flank of the Bitterroot Range , through the Lolo National Forest . It receives the Bitterroot River from the south-southwest approximately 5.5 miles (8.9 km) west of downtown Missoula. Along the Cabinet Mountains , the river receives the Flathead River from the east near Paradise . It receives the Thompson River from the north near Thompson Falls in southern Sanders County . There are three dams on

1395-568: The original (PDF) on February 27, 2009. Clark Fork River The Clark Fork , or the Clark Fork of the Columbia River , is a river in the U.S. states of Montana and Idaho , approximately 310 miles (500 km) long. It is named after William Clark of the 1806 Lewis and Clark Expedition . The largest river by volume in Montana, it drains an extensive region of the Rocky Mountains in western Montana and northern Idaho in

Glacier View Dam - Misplaced Pages Continue

1440-467: The park. With the rejection of the Glacier View project, the Belton project never progressed beyond its listing as a potential project. The proposed Glacier View Dam was to be a 416-foot (127 m) high, 2,100-foot (640 m) long earth embankment dam, impounding a reservoir with a capacity of 3,160,000 acre-feet (3.90 km) and covering an area of about 48 square miles (120 km). A gated spillway

1485-453: The project. Other lands inundated or required by this project are in private, State and United States Forest Service ownership and hence should be of no concern to the Park Service. Although there would be some effect on the wildlife in the area, the construction of Glacier View Reservoir would inconvenience but relatively few people as it is situated in a sparsely populated area. Park Service Director Newton B. Drury responded: The effects of

1530-596: The proposed impoundment of the North Fork of the Flathead River upon Glacier National Park would be extraordinarily serious upon the very values with the National Park Service is obliged by law, and expected by the public, to protect ... The flooding of park land would reduce the winter range of [white-tailed deer] by 56 percent. In order to prevent extensive starvation, it would be necessary for

1575-531: The river enters the northeastern end of Lake Pend Oreille , approximately 8 miles (13 km) west of the Idaho–Montana border, near the town of Clark Fork, Idaho . During the last ice age , from approximately 20,000 years ago, the Clark Fork Valley lay along the southern edge of the Cordilleran Ice Sheet covering western North America . The encroachment of the ice sheet formed an ice dam on

1620-537: The river, creating Glacial Lake Missoula , which stretched through the Clark Fork Valley across central Montana. The periodic rupturing and rebuilding of the ice dam released the Missoula Floods , a series of catastrophic floods down the Clark Fork and Pend Oreille into the Columbia, which sculpted many of the geographic features of eastern Washington and the Willamette Valley of Oregon . In

1665-525: The south of the park was proposed to have been connected to the Hungry Horse reservoir, with a power generation plant at the conduit's discharge. Paradise Dam is described by the Corps of Engineers as preferable from the point of view of the overall plan, standing on both the Clark Fork River and the Flathead, but the flooding of towns and productive agricultural lands stirred intense local opposition. The 1950 Corps of Engineers report that detailed

1710-423: The total Glacier National Park area. This area does not lie within the rugged, glacier-covered portion of the park for which it is noted, but rather is on the western boundary line, in a little-used valley. The reservoir area is covered with lodge-pole pine, an inferior species of limited use. Other species of pine timber such as ponderosa pine, are predominate above the normal full reservoir and will not be injured by

1755-910: The two 500 kV AC lines of the Pacific AC Intertie, plus a third 500 kV AC line of the California-Oregon Transmission Project (COTP) (managed by the Balancing Authority of Northern California). Together these three lines are operated as the California-Oregon Intertie (COI) (managed by the California Independent System Operator CAISO). An additional DC ±500 kV line, the Pacific DC Intertie , links BPA's grid at

1800-569: The winter range for the park's white-tailed deer , elk , mule deer and moose . The proposed reservoir was to extend nearly to the Canada–US border, at an estimated cost of $ 94,962,000. The dam was supported by Montana Representative Mike Mansfield and Flathead Valley interests but was opposed by former Senator Burton K. Wheeler , local ranchers, the National Park Service , the Glacier Park Hotel Company,

1845-427: Was completed. BPA is still making payments on three of the abandoned plants. In 2003, BPA's debt for the nuclear project totaled $ 6.2 billion. In 1973, the BPA commissioned TRW Inc. to write software for the PDP-10 mainframe computer that managed the agency's power grid; Bill Gates and Paul Allen wrote the software for the monitoring system, which remained in operation until its replacement in 2013. In 2014,

Glacier View Dam - Misplaced Pages Continue

1890-471: Was controlled by the British-Canadian North West Company and Hudson's Bay Company . In the mid-19th century, the Clark Fork River wound through the valley where cattle had replaced bison . This was when Conrad Kohrs purchased a ranch from Johnny Grant that is now called the Grant-Kohrs Ranch, a National Historic Site and Federal Park. For a history of the river and the people, see Grant-Kohrs family and history of Clark Fork River region. The Clark Fork and

1935-415: Was not to be repeated. A similar, more difficult fight followed over the proposed Echo Park Dam in Dinosaur National Monument . A related project, the Paradise project on the Clark Fork River just below its confluence with the Flathead , was opposed by local interests. The Paradise project was considered by the Corps of Engineers to be a more desirable project than Glacier Point, but was considered by

1980-411: Was signed into law by President Franklin D. Roosevelt on August 20, 1936. The federal agency was created to market electricity from the Bonneville and Grand Coulee dams based on the model of the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA). It would provide a flat rate for customer utilities and use revenue from these sales to pay off the bonds used by the federal government to finance the construction of dams in

2025-404: Was to be built to the north side, feeding a tunnel through the abutment. A powerplant at the toe of the dam was planned to house three 70 MW generating units, fed by an intake tower and equipped with a surge tank. The chosen site was to be at river mile 176.5. Alternate sites at Fool Hen Hill (river mile 167) and Bad Rock Canyon (river mile 150) were rejected. The Fool Hen Hill site was found to have

#300699