The largest dam in the Columbia River is the Grand Coulee dam. Not only does this dam help control the water in the Columbia River so as to prevent floods, it also irrigates 600,000 acres of land and provides 6,809 megawatts of electricity. In that sense at least, it is both environmentally friendly and industry friendly because it conserves power and water and gives industries access to a larger power resource. However, the dam does consist of 11,975,521 cubic yards of concrete and requires an additional 536,364 cubic yards of concrete per month, which can get expensive. Basically from a government standpoint building this dam, as well as others along the Columbia River was a mechanism to prevent flooding after there was a huge flood that whipped out the entire city of Vanport in Oregon. In addition to that, building the dam was expected to bring in a ton of jobs and provide us with cheap water and power in the wake of the Great Depression, so that was the original reason for building the Grand Coulee and Bonneville dams. When the band started developing electric power it brought in big industries to the area, and did not help the residents that much. This caused turmoil, as people generally do not want big business building around their living space, and these factories also caused a fair amount of pollution. At the same time, this again provided a lot of people in the area with jobs and money. The downside to damming up the Columbia River is that it has adverse effects on the ecosystem. Because of this, the fish population there has decreased dramatically since the dams were built. This is because the dams actually block fish from migrating.
Sources:
http://www.ohs.org/education/oregonhistory/historicviewer/CeliloFalls/
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