Before the dams were put in, shipping rates were abominably high. It is no wonder that inland leaders fought for decades to get barge transportation up the Snake River. In addition to the barges, the reservoirs are used by a large fleet of recreational boaters. Although navigation interests have appeared before the Northwest Power Planning Council to explain that any drawdown would destroy their industry, the Council does not seem to be listening. Presumably, they would be horrified at aggressive state promotion of more conventional religions.
Many human communities depend upon the dams for their water supplies.
Lower Snake Reservoirs irrigate 35,000 acres of land, and supply 16 facilities with municipal or industrial water supplies. The land along the Snake River is unique. Geologists call this wind-deposited silt 'loess', and it forms an icing over the lava, a sensuous curving landscape of incredible fertility, topsoil over two hundred feet deep in places, some of the richest on earth. 119 Irrigation has turned the loess into highly productive farmland. Northwest citizens whose lives are largely invisible to the urban majorities in Seattle, Olympia, Portland, and Salem live and work on farms that will be destroyed if drawdown plans pass.