These past few weeks of my Environmental Science class have been all about different types of energy: hydropower, fossil fuels (think coal, oil, gas), biomass, geothermal, petroleum, propane, solar, uranium, and wind. We’ve read definitions, listened to lectures, and watched many videos. We also learned about the pros and cons of each energy source. For instance, coal is cheap but is a dirty process and burns all the energy in one go, making it unrenewable. 

As the capstone project for this unit, our teacher assigned each student to prepare a presentation on a single energy source…with a twist.

We could set our presentations in any time and place in history, knowing that we need to “sell” our energy source to the rest of the class.  Our classmates would act as a government body, and they would vote on which presentation was most persuasive.

I was assigned hydropower, which is energy created by moving or flowing water.

For my presentation, I chose to have the class represent the government of Washington State in the year 1941.

I chose this time and place because America’s use of hydropower peaked during WWII, and Washington state was pro-hydropower in the 1940s, and remains so today. 

Something I found while researching is that the US used hydropower as one of its main energy sources during World War II. Hydropower was used to build ships, planes, and tanks, all of which were sent overseas for the war. 

I really enjoyed this assignment, and I never would have guessed that hydropower was most used during WWII. I did an accidental deep dive for this project, and ended up learning a lot more about America’s energy systems in the 40s, which is something I never would have thought to research.

 Fun fact: The Hoover Dam was closed to visitors from December 9th, 1941 (two days after Pearl Harbor) to the end of WWII because FDR knew it would be a target and didn’t want civilians to be endangered. The Soviet Union had bombed one of their own incredibly expensive and effective hydropowered dams to stop the Germans from taking control of it.  FDR took inspiration  from them, though he closed the Hoover Dam rather than destroying it.