And, since these were the 1960s, and since this was the army that wanted to build the project, there may have been a further consideration working behind Rampart Dam. Ernest Gruening had, he said, recently returned from Russia, where he had seen “hydroelectric power dams larger than the largest in America.” The dam, then, was to be a monument against Communism; and if it made it any easier to build it, one might as well note that the ducks whose habitat would be drowned were Communist ducks—many of them migrated to Siberia. Did it make sense, a director of Yukon Power of America asked, “to
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