McNary
McNary Dam is a conventional hydroelectric plant in Umatilla County, Oregon, with 850.5 MW of nameplate capacity across the twelve generating units EIA-860 lists as operating, commissioned between 1953 and 1957. The dam is a 1.4-mile concrete gravity, run-of-the-river structure on the Columbia River that joins Umatilla County, Oregon, with Benton County, Washington, about 292 river miles above the river's mouth. It is a federal project owned by the United States and run by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' Walla Walla District, which also operates the adjoining 86-foot by 683-foot navigation lock and two fish ladders, one on each shore, for salmon and steelhead passage. The Corps' own project fact sheet describes the powerhouse's full fourteen-unit installation as a 980-megawatt total capacity, a figure larger than the sum of the units EIA-860 records as generators, likely because two of the fourteen units serve as station-service turbines that power the dam itself rather than sell into the grid. As a run-of-river, non-FERC-licensed federal dam, McNary has no license expiration and no whole-plant or unit retirement scheduled. The project also provides black-start capability, meaning it can restart other generation on the regional grid after a large-scale outage.