Go ahead and slap me for it, but we shouldn't be dismantling dams.

[TheWraith]

No, not even to help the salmon. Sorry, but the benefit to fish populations would be hugely outweighed by the green energy those dams could produce, replacing coal power and improving the environment for everybody, including the fish.

[XemaSab]

1. .

[TheWraith]

2. Shoulda seen that coming.

[tularetom]

3. When the lake behind the dam has silted up

and the penstocks need constant cleaning it becomes uneconomical to operate the dam as a generator of power and the reservoir is worthless as a water storage or flood control facility.

Google "Lake Cachuma" for some specifics.

[CaliforniaPeggy]

4. That may be, but ...

The water that is sequestered up behind those dams evaporates, and the lakes fill up with silt.

And the fish most definitely suffer from trying to get past those dams.

[RobertEarl]

5. Behemoth dams are not needed

Run of the river dams can be acceptable.

Still, the idea that "whenever we need we shall destroy to get more"
idea is just plain asinine. We know better now how to live within our means, and behemoth dams are not needed.

[OnlinePoker]

12. Not here in BC

Every proposed run-of-river project has faced stiff opposition from environmental groups and only a handful have actually been approved.

[RobertEarl]

13. Those damn environmentalists...

....they've ruined everything!

[XemaSab]

6. As a Californian, I am deeply, deeply conflicted about dams

If the apocalypse were tomorrow and I was the last human on earth, taking down the dams would be my first and only priority.

As a human living in a society with other humans, not only do I understand the reasons for having dams, but I have a vested interest myself in keeping dams. My house is in the floodplain of the Sacramento River, I eat food grown with water that is released from dams in the summer, and right now dams are probably keeping my house at a happy 72 degrees when it's 93 degrees outside.

I don't think it's right that the San Joaquin River is a dry wash, and I don't think it's right that the area around Bakersfield would be a lake right now were it not for dams. Tulare County was named "tulare" for the large stands of tules. If that area were not farmed it would be a desert because there is not enough rainfall in the valley to grow lush vegetation.

On the other side, keeping steelhead in Southern California seems like a fool's errand. They're marginal there, and efforts would be better spent restoring habitat in areas that could easily have a healthy population instead of keeping them putzing along at the edge of their range.

Also, hydropower is really the only other peaker besides natural gas that can help us transition to a different way of producing energy.

Besides, were there not water to grow crops in the summer, what other horrors would take place in the name of agriculture?

In summary, I am conflicted.

[XemaSab]

7. To put it another way

It's a place where idealism and pragmatism collide.

[Warren Stupidity]

8. most of the dams being removed are ancient and useless and scew up the rivers they are on.

You might have a point, except you don't.

[Throckmorton]

9. I don't see Hydro Dams as particularly Green,

It is just that most of them date back to the beginning of the last century, and the environmental damage they caused when they were built is just treated as a sunk cost in todays eyes.

[TheWraith]

14. They're "useless" because they're not being used properly.

There's plenty of old dams which are producing good solid hydro power. I have no doubt it would take less time and work to get most of these operating than it would to build new clean power plants.

[Kolesar]

10. The four dams in Hell's Canyon of the Snake River should be removed

The millions of salmon that spawned in the gravel bars of the Columbia River basin served a much larger purpose than you know. They fed bears and birds and introduced nutrients into the plant and animal life of the ecosystems near the river.

The dams in Hell's Canyon were built with no fish ladders. They only serve the purpose of providing super cheap electricity to the aluminum industry. The shareholders of those companies should sacrifice, not the salmon.

[hatrack]

11. Read these and get back to us, OK?

http://www.usbr.gov/pmts/sediment/projects/Matilija/MatilijaDam.html

http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/05/21/1085120121829.html

http://www.oregonlive.com/environment/index.ssf/2010/10/early_signs_good_for_dam_remov.html

http://www2.ljworld.com/news/2007/oct/28/silt_crowding_out_drinking_water_reservoirs/

http://www.infrastructurereportcard.org/state-page/utah

http://www.infrastructurereportcard.org/state-page/new-hampshire

http://www.infrastructurereportcard.org/state-page/oklahoma

[hunter]

15. Tearing down dams and restoring watersheds would be an excellent public works project.

Lost hydroelectric power and water storage capacity could be replaced by solar energy, groundwater management projects, and wastewater recycling. These too would be excellent public works projects.

"Lost" flood control capacity would be mitigated by moving infrastructure off of flood plains; yet another excellent public works project.

We need to tap the huge sums of money cycling uselessly through our corrupt financial system and recycle it for the benefit of all.

The dam building of the twentieth century was an unsustainable and costly mistake. If our economy falters we will lose the capacity to maintain these complex systems and they will eventually fail catastrophically.

We won't be the first civilization of dam and canal builders to fail in this manner, but our failure will certainly be the most spectacular, looking a lot like this:

wikipedia



http://www.damsafety.org/news/?p=412f29c8-3fd8-4529-b5c9-8d47364c1f3e#HistoricFailures