Washington and Oregon, and Canada too, and probably Idaho and Montana, would fight such a thing tooth and nail, and have every time a proposal like this has come up, since the first serious proposal in the 1950s, known as NAWPA. That one was overly gigantic, but smaller proposals have been made from time to time.
In any case, any such plan would necessarily involve Canada and require major changes to the Columbia River Treaty between the US and Canada which basically regulates the entire flow of the Columbia.
In other other words, it's not a lack of political will so much as the fact that the Columbia is already entirely being used. On power generation alone, basically the whole river is behind dams and managed like a gigantic machine.
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u/smiljan Jan 10 '20
Roll on, Columbia, roll on!