Grand Coulee Dam seen as the answer. Efforts to build the Third Powerplant were also influenced by competition with the Soviet Union, which had constructed power plants on the Volga River larger than Grand Coulee. On , 1964, the Columbia River Treaty was ratified and included an agreement by Canada to construct the Duncan, Keenleyside, Mica Dams upstream and the U.S. would build the Libby Dam in Montana. Shortly afterward, Washington Senator Henry M. Jackson, who was influential in constructing the new power plant, announced Reclamation would present the project to Congress for appropriation and funding. To keep up with Soviet competition and
Grand Coulee Dam in the newspapers, stating exploratory drilling at the Grand Coulee site found no granite on which a dam's foundations could rest, only clay and fragmented rock. This was later disproved with Reclamation-ordered drilling. Ditchers hired General George W. Goethals, engineer of the Panama Canal, to prepare a report. Goethals visited the state and produced a report backing the ditchers. The Bureau of Reclamation was unimpressed by Goethals' report, believing it filled with errors. In , President Warren G. Harding visited Washington state and expressed support for irrigation work there, but died a month later. His successor, Calvin Coolidge, had little