Grand Coulee Dam is among the most powerful energy-generating dams on earth. It’s the bedrock of the federal Columbia River Power System — a network of 31 dams supplying more than half of the hydropower in the Northwest. Grand Coulee alone, overseen by the federal Bureau of Reclamation, generates one-quarter of that.

But critical operations at the dam are going understaffed following President Donald Trump’s orders, executed by the Office of Personnel Management, to cut probationary federal employees, freeze new hiring at federal agencies and offer incentives to get employees to retire and resign early. It’s a problem at several agencies that oversee the system, which have lost hundreds of employees and could collectively lose hundreds more by fall, and it has regional electric utilities

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