For this river valley is not only a phenomenal source of wind power, as Secretary Chu pointed out, but it has an extensive hydroelectric infrastructure left over from the heady days of big government investment in public works that helped to pull America out of the Great Depression. These New Deal dams (Grand Coulee and Bonneville most especially) and their smaller, more recent brethren were providing 98 percent of the Pacific Northwest’s electricity needs before the first industrial wind turbine went up; now there is all that hydro and all that wind power all in one place.
