 Supporters of the project suggested that the cheap electricity provided by the dam would be a strong enticement for electricity @-@ intensive industries , such as aluminum smelting , to move to Alaska . They were encouraged by a 1962 economic feasibility study by the Development and Resources Corporation , which stated that the electricity generated would attract aluminum , magnesium and titanium industries to the region and help process locally produced minerals . The report also stated that the dam would attract a wood pulp mill on at least a temporary basis to process the hundreds of millions of board feet of timber that would otherwise be lost as the dam 's reservoir flooded . The authors of the DRC report were specific enough to predict that 19 @,@ 746 jobs would be created by the dam 's construction — not including jobs opened during the construction process . Both the 1962 study , and another report by University of Michigan researcher Michael Brewer in 1966 , stated that tens of thousands of jobs would be created by the construction process alone , even if the cheap electricity generated by the dam failed to attract any additional industries to Alaska . 
