White Bluffs spokesman. [volume] (White Bluffs, Wash.) 1907-1938, 1925-03-06
LICENSE FOR PRIEST RAPIDS dam is ISSUED
EARLY CONSTRUCTION LOOKED FOR

oAAOdAos
Dwarfs Muscle Shoals Project.
Niagara Falls has primary power
output of 500,00 horsepower, as com
pared with 100000 horsepower fol
Priest Rapids. but the Priest Rapid:
project is intended to develop at high
stages of the Columbia River 350,0C(
additional or secondary. horsepower
making its total output at these
stages larger than that of Niagara.
! In every way Priest Rapids dwarfs
the much-talked-of Muscle Shoals
project, which can develop only $780,
600 horsepower the year around and
650,000 horsepower at high stages OF
water.
The thing that makes the Priest
Rapids project unique and that prom
ises an epoch-maldng industrial de-
velopment for this state and the en-
tire Pacific Northwest is that the
General Electric Company group has
| planned and financed the entire pro-
ject with the purpose Of using the en-
tire power output of the giant plant
in the manufacturing processes re-
ferred to and to be established at the
new industrial city.
Under these plans no power what
ever will be sold on the open mar
ket. Even the secondary or high
water power will be used by the COM
pany in irrigation work and not
dumped on the market. Some years
ago the promoters of the project pur-
CHASED nearly 100000 acres of fertile
plant and this will be irrigated by
IL -
River with electric pura,s in the sum
mer season when power production is
at its peak.
$4,000, 900 Already Spent.
4 This irrigation project in itself is
a colossal scheme since it contem-
plates the addition to the irrigated
areas of the state a body Of fertile
land larger than that now under ditch
in the famous Yakima Valley.
The Washington Irrigation & De-
velopment Company, formed more
than ten years ago by Henry Pierce,
electrical engineer of Seattle, has
been working ever since that time on
! the plans now about to come into
] fruition. In various ways, including
i dam site borings, engineering re-
search and purchase Of lands exclu-
] sive of those to be irrigated. the
company already has spent, it was
stated today, about $600o,0o0.
1t was the purpose of the promot-
! crs of the plan to bcgin construction
+, Of the great dam at Priest Rapids
last year but protest was inter-
posed by the salmon fishing interests
of the lower Columbia who repre-
sented to the government that the
9o-foot dam would prevent salmon
y from reaching their spawning
grounds in <the upper reaches of the
8 river. Hearings were had on this
protest before Col. w. J. Barden
United States Army engineer, in Sc
attic: several months ago, Colonel
the Federal Power Commission.
{. Fishway Problem Solved.
It was left to a commission of SCI
entists and practical fishery men to
work out a plan by which the fish
can be carried over the dam. The
fact that the Power Commission has
grsnted the license is take,, by local
representatives Of the development
company to Indicate that the COM
mission is satisfied that the fish cle-
/, yator or escalator scheme recently
/ outlined in The Times by Prof. John
4! ". Cobb of the University of Wash
ingtcn, or One similar, will solve the
problem. Or. Cobb is one Of the COM
mission that is studying the fshway
problem.
Though the local representatives
Of the Washington Irrigation & de-
velopment Company have no advices
to the effect. they expect that the
General Electric Company interests
will begin work at Priest Rapids al
once in view of the fact that their
plans were delayed almost a year by
the fisheries protest and in view OF
tile future fact that the fifty-year
period for which the government Ii
cense is granted began to run today
Up to the present the promoters have
been working under a Federal Power
Commission three-year permit.
i When he was in Seattle last sum-
mer to attend hearings on the pro-
test of the salmon interests, Mr..
Pierce, who now makes his home in
New York, announced that as the
representative of the capitalists in
terested he had spent nearly a year
III GuIOPc studying tuC latest ucVcl-
opments in the electro-chemical in
dustries and had purchased the ex-
elusive American rights to use four
or five Of the most valuable of these,
including new and cheap process of
taking nitratcs from the air and
making ammonia by synthetic
process.
Supply of Raw Products.
Mr.. Pierce also announced that the
promoters had purchased 600 acres
of aluminium clay in Idaho for use
in a big aluminium plant at Priest
Rapids and had procured large de-
posits of phosphates, potash and
other minerals in this and other Pa
cific Northwest states, to be drawn
upon for the clectro-chemical plants
to be built by the General Electric
COrnpanv proripS -