# Chief Joseph

BPA asset profile · https://askthegrid.com/assets/facilities/chief-joseph

U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Seattle District - Douglas County - BPAT

Chief Joseph Dam is a conventional hydroelectric plant with generators listed in EIA-860 totaling 1,743.8 MW of nameplate capacity, located in Douglas County, Washington. The dam sits on the Columbia River near Bridgeport and is widely cited as the second-largest hydropower producer in the United States and the largest hydropower facility operated by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. It is owned and run by the Corps' Seattle District, with the electricity marketed onto the grid by the Bonneville Power Administration. As a run-of-the-river project, Chief Joseph has no significant storage reservoir and, like the dams immediately upstream and downstream on this stretch of the Columbia, has no fish ladder for migrating salmon. As of 2025 the Corps was carrying out a multi-million-dollar rehabilitation of the plant's 16-unit generator rewinds, air coolers and condition-monitoring systems to keep the aging powerhouse reliable. No whole-plant or partial retirement is scheduled; all listed generating units remain in service.

## Metrics

- **Nameplate capacity:** 1743.8000000000002 MW — Canonical EIA plant baseline.
- **Registry anchor:** Plant 3921 — plant-3921

## Facts

- **Technology:** Conventional Hydroelectric
- **Operator:** U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Seattle District

## Related parties

- **Owner / operator:** U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Seattle District — Owner and project operator ([source](https://www.nws.usace.army.mil/))
- **Power marketer / transmission owner / balancing authority:** Bonneville Power Administration — Markets and sells electricity produced at the dam; balancing authority; transmission owner. ([source](https://www.bpa.gov/))
- **Construction contractor / equipment supplier:** REIVAX NORTH AMERICA — Excitation-system replacement contractor ([source](https://www.reivax.com/))

## Sources

- [water.usace.army.mil](https://water.usace.army.mil/cda/documents/wc/2662/Final_CHJ-Rdct.pdf) — water.usace.army.mil · public_source — Source retained for exact-record publication review.
- [cbr.washington.edu](https://www.cbr.washington.edu/dart/hydro/chiefjoseph) — cbr.washington.edu · public_source — Source retained for exact-record publication review.
- [nwd.usace.army.mil](https://www.nwd.usace.army.mil/fact-sheets/article/3485145/chief-joseph-dam-and-rufus-woods-lake) — nwd.usace.army.mil · public_source — Source retained for exact-record publication review.

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Canonical page: https://askthegrid.com/assets/facilities/chief-joseph
Website: [U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (federal government)](https://www.nws.usace.army.mil/)

Source: Ask the Grid — https://askthegrid.com/