Welcome to the Rocky Reach Dam on the mighty Columbia River.

Let's go explore.

We're here at Rocky Reach Dam, just seven miles upstream from Wenatchee.

We're right here in the powerhouse, the heart of the dam.

Kristin, what are we doing here?

What's this?

So we're looking out across the .. and Rocky Reach is really incredible.

When you come visit us at the Discovery Center, you’re going to get a window into the heart of what we do here at Chelan PUD.

So you're looking out across the generation floor with 11 generators putting power on the grid right now.

We were built between 1956 and 1961, in a really incredible state of the art design.

We're built like the letter Z. It's so that we can take more advantage of a greater stretch of the river for our powerhouse.

And that gives the citizens of Chelan County some public power benefits.

I can show you a few of those.

As important as it is that we produce electricity for our customer owners here in Chelan County.

It's equally important that we safely move salmon pass the dam.

And we do so in two ways.

For our juvenile salmon, we move them pass in the juvenile fish bypass pipe.

The super soaker baby fish water slide?

I love it, absolutely!

A super water slide for baby salmon.

As we would say to our fourth graders that come out and visit, right?

The other way we move salmon pass the dam, The adults move pass in the fish ladder, and we can go take a look at that in the Discovery Center.

I just love how excited people get about fish.

I do too!

This for sure is the wow moment in the Discovery Center, right?

When a giant salmon swims pass, it is.

It's exciting and they're beautiful.

We see about 690,000 fish at least that came through last year.

We've got about 75,000 visitors so there's a lot of wow moments here at the Discovery Center.

We can take you upstairs to see some more.

Let's do it.

Bob, tell me about the connection of the river and the community.

Yeah, absolutely.

So it's all about the people, right?

So you've got your history, you've got your operations, you've got fish passage, you've got electrical generation, but it's the people, and it's that mighty Columbia River that has been serving people for eons and eons.

Right.

A primar.. Long before we were here, the river was serving the people, right, by being.. And then it became the major transportation highway across the state of Washington before the railroad came in.

And, of course, it provides all the irrigation for all the orchards and the vineyards in this valley and all the agricultural industry.

And then when you think about the Columbia, it is probably one of the greatest playgrounds in the world, whether it's kids swimming on a beach or whether it's somebody out there paddleboarding or jet skiing or fishing or just enjoying the day on the water, right?

So it's a great playground.

And then, of course, it provides power, which turns on the light bulbs in our house, and we are able to meet the needs of the people in Chelan County and even beyond.

And we're quite lucky that it's maintained by such wonderful folks.

Thank you so much for all this information.

Thank you for letting us share.

Absolutely.

I'm Angela.

Thank you for exploring.

I'll see you.

Thanks for visiting us.