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

[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.