Lyndon B. Johnson photo

Remarks Upon Signing Bill Authorizing a Powerplant at the Grand Coulee Dam

June 14, 1966

Mr. Vice President, Secretary Udall, Senator Magnuson, Senator Jackson, Congressman Foley, distinguished Members of the Congress, ladies and gentlemen:

I am happy to see so many of the distinguished leaders of the electric power industry here this morning. I am very happy to welcome our friends from Canada to the Rose Garden. My first trip outside the United States, after I became President, was to meet with my good friend, Prime Minister Pearson, in order to sign the Columbia River Treaty.

Without that treaty, providing for the construction of three storage dams on the upper Columbia River, this great expansion of Grand Coulee would not have been possible.

This morning I am signing not one but two very important measures. The first is a bill authorizing a third powerhouse for Grand Coulee Dam. The second is an appropriation request for $3 million, so we can begin construction of that powerhouse immediately.

Our Canadian friends will finish their projects by 1973. We want to be ready to use the benefits that are going to flow from those dams.

This authorization builds on a project which was begun more than 30 years ago. And not a year has passed which did not bring new benefits and greater prosperity to the people of the region that it serves. The whole Nation, I think, has benefited greatly, for the development of the resources of any region always adds to the strength and prosperity of all the regions.

New industries have been created. New towns have been established. Thousands of homes and farms have been modernized with modern electricity. Tens of thousands of new jobs have been created, and close to half a million acres of farmland have been irrigated.

All this came as a surprise to some people who originally opposed the whole concept of Grand Coulee Dam. There is a famous quotation from one of those early skeptics. "Up in the Grand Coulee country," he said, "there is no one to sell power to except coyotes and jackrabbits, and there never will be."

Well, today, the two powerplants of the Grand Coulee are straining to full capacity. This third powerplant, so desperately needed, will make Grand Coulee Dam larger than any hydroelectric project now in operation anywhere in the world. The 3.6 million kilowatts, added to the 2 million already there, will bring Grand Coulee's capacity to 5.6 million kilowatts. The Grand Coulee Dam is an excellent example, for this new powerhouse, like the two already existing, will benefit both private utilities and consumer-owned co-ops alike. They will enjoy those benefits, because they have decided to share them as equal partners.

We have a right to be proud of the accomplishments of the American electric institute. We have only 6 percent of the world's population. Yet we produce 40 percent of the world's electricity.

During the past 30 years our population has increased by 50 percent. But our capacity to produce electricity has increased not by 50 percent, but by 10 times that amount, 500 percent. The lives of our people are enriched in a thousand ways by this abundance of energy. And it is brought to them at rates that they can afford. In fact, average electric rates in the United States have fallen from 2.46 cents in 1935 to 1.59 cents today.

We have accomplished this miracle within the diversity of our free enterprise system. Some 80 percent of our people are now served by private systems. The other 20 percent have chosen to get their service from public systems and cooperatives. And as the years pass, we see mounting evidence that the jealousies and the antagonisms which once stood between public and private power in this Nation are disappearing.

This is especially true in the Pacific Northwest--not only in connection with the Grand Coulee Dam, but in the mutual use of such facilities as the Hartford atomic energy plant and the non-Federal Columbia River dams.

By 1980--only 14 years from now--the demand for electric energy will be nearly three times as large as it is today. If we are going to meet that demand, we are going to have to continue to strengthen that partnership.

And so to you leaders of the electric industry who have come here with us this morning--to you leaders in the Congress-I want to say: Thanks for what we have accomplished together. It is tremendous. But the job which lies ahead is equally monumental. It will take the best efforts of all of us. So let us now take a step forward by signing these two measures and getting on our way.

Thank you very much.

Note: The President spoke at 9:35 a.m. in the Rose Garden at the White House. In his opening words he referred to Vice President Hubert H. Humphrey, Secretary of the Interior Stewart L. Udall, and to Senator Warren G. Magnuson, Senator Henry M. Jackson, and Representative Thomas S. Foley, all of Washington.

As enacted, the bill (S. 1761) authorizing construction of the powerplant and the appropriation of funds, is Public Law 89-448 (80 Stat. 200).

For the President's remarks with Prime Minister Lester B. Pearson of Canada on January 22, 1964, at the signing of the Columbia River Agreement, see 1963-64 volume, this series, Book I, Item 134.

Lyndon B. Johnson, Remarks Upon Signing Bill Authorizing a Powerplant at the Grand Coulee Dam Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/node/238753

Filed Under

Categories

Attributes

Location

Washington, DC

Simple Search of Our Archives