would pay back the costs of the project over time, being repeatedly revised and becoming a permanent water subsidy. In addition, the original vision of a social engineering project intended to help farmers settle on small landholdings failed. Farm plots, at first restricted in size, became larger and soon became corporate agribusiness operations. The original plan was that a federal agency similar to the Tennessee Valley Authority would manage the entire system. Instead, conflicts between the Bureau of Reclamation and the Department of Agriculture thwarted the goal of both agencies of settling the project area with small family farms; larger corporate farms arose instead. The determination to finish the project's plan to irrigate the full waned during the 1960s. The estimated total cost for completing the project had more than doubled between 1940 and 1964, it had become clear that the government's financial investment would not be recovered, and that the benefits of the project were unevenly distributed and increasingly going to larger businesses and corporations. These issues and others dampened enthusiasm for the project, although the exact motives behind the decision to stop construction with the project about half finished are not known. Geology The Columbia Basin in Central Washington is fertile due to its loess soils, but large portions are a near desert, receiving less than ten inches (254 mm) of rain per year. The area is characterized by huge deposits of flood basalt, thousands of feet thick in places, laid down over a period of approximately 11 million years, during the Miocene epoch. These flood basalts are exposed in some places, while in others they are covered with thick layers of loess. During the last ice age glaciers shaped the landscape of the Columbia River Plateau. Ice blocked the Columbia River near the north end of Grand Coulee, creating glacial lakes Columbia and Spokane. Ice age glaciers also created Glacial Lake Missoula, in what is now Montana. Erosion allowed glacial Lake Columbia to begin to drain into what became Grand Coulee, which was fully created when glacial Lake Missoula along with glacial Lake Columbia catastrophically emptied. This flood event was one of several known as the Missoula Floods. Unique erosion features, called channeled scablands, are attributed to these amazing floods. Component units of the project Grand Coulee Dam Complex and Lake Roosevelt Grand Coulee Dam (1950) Right (north) Powerhouse Left (south) Powerhouse Third Powerhouse (1974) was added