Most Oregonians never knew it, but for decades one of this state’s greatest strategic assets was not timber, not salmon, and not scenic beauty. It was electricity.
Cheap, abundant, reliable hydroelectric power turned the Pacific Northwest into an industrial and national-security engine. It fueled innovation that mattered long before anyone was arguing about data centers or artificial intelligence.
That advantage is now being deliberately weakened, not because of hard engineering limits, but because modern policy increasingly prioritizes emotional narratives over physical reality. The result will be higher power prices, lost economic opportunity, and a grid that may not be capable of supporting either an electrified transportation future or the AI-driven economy already taking shape elsewhere.
How Hydropower Built Real Industry in Oregon
The Columbia River hydro system was never built as a feel-good environmental project. It was built as industrial infrastructure…