<story><title>Tearing down Klamath dams: The largest dam demolition</title><url>https://calmatters.org/environment/2023/08/klamath-river-dams-demolition/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>poulsbohemian</author><text>I took a tour with the Corps of Engineers earlier this week at a dam on the Snake River. Apparently it isn&amp;#x27;t that difficult to get a tour, which I recommend to any member of the public. My politics are very progressive, but like so many issues, the dams have been reduced to sound bytes rather than comprehensive understanding.&lt;p&gt;I came away with an even greater feeling that this is a topic too complicated to just take a side, but rather the best possible outcomes happen when stakeholders work together. We need the fish, the energy, the irrigation, the flood control, and the ease of barge-based agricultural transportation. There is serious effort put into protecting wildlife (IE: fish) with very, very good outcomes. I think it&amp;#x27;s easy to assume that the pro-dam crowd is anti-environment, which couldn&amp;#x27;t be farther from the truth.&lt;p&gt;What really solidified for me this week is that these dams have a defined lifetime. Many are reaching the end of that lifetime, but the technology to replace them with something else isn&amp;#x27;t really there yet. Given the net benefit and the massive costs of replacement, it&amp;#x27;s very clear to me we are better letting them run their natural lives rather than removing prematurely. As each reaches a point where it is no longer viable, that is when and where we should consider other options.&lt;p&gt;Something I haven&amp;#x27;t seen discussed anywhere, but to me is almost obvious - these various wave generators we see in discussion for off-shore use. Is there a way that technology can be used in the Columbia, Snake, etc without the need for a dam? At the same time too often in these discussions there are other issues overlooked - like how much Washington &amp;#x2F; Oregon wheat goes down the river on barges that would otherwise be tractor trailers on the highways. Lots of problems to solve.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>DeRock</author><text>&amp;gt; Something I haven&amp;#x27;t seen discussed anywhere, but to me is almost obvious - these various wave generators we see in discussion for off-shore use. Is there a way that technology can be used in the Columbia, Snake, etc without the need for a dam?&lt;p&gt;There are some companies doing small scale hydro, by taking advantage of the natural flow of a river, without the use of any dam&amp;#x2F;head. Eg. see &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;emrgy.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;emrgy.com&lt;/a&gt;, and a volts podcast with the founder&amp;#x2F;CEO: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.volts.wtf&amp;#x2F;p&amp;#x2F;how-to-make-small-hydro-more-like#details&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.volts.wtf&amp;#x2F;p&amp;#x2F;how-to-make-small-hydro-more-like#de...&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>
<story><title>Tearing down Klamath dams: The largest dam demolition</title><url>https://calmatters.org/environment/2023/08/klamath-river-dams-demolition/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>poulsbohemian</author><text>I took a tour with the Corps of Engineers earlier this week at a dam on the Snake River. Apparently it isn&amp;#x27;t that difficult to get a tour, which I recommend to any member of the public. My politics are very progressive, but like so many issues, the dams have been reduced to sound bytes rather than comprehensive understanding.&lt;p&gt;I came away with an even greater feeling that this is a topic too complicated to just take a side, but rather the best possible outcomes happen when stakeholders work together. We need the fish, the energy, the irrigation, the flood control, and the ease of barge-based agricultural transportation. There is serious effort put into protecting wildlife (IE: fish) with very, very good outcomes. I think it&amp;#x27;s easy to assume that the pro-dam crowd is anti-environment, which couldn&amp;#x27;t be farther from the truth.&lt;p&gt;What really solidified for me this week is that these dams have a defined lifetime. Many are reaching the end of that lifetime, but the technology to replace them with something else isn&amp;#x27;t really there yet. Given the net benefit and the massive costs of replacement, it&amp;#x27;s very clear to me we are better letting them run their natural lives rather than removing prematurely. As each reaches a point where it is no longer viable, that is when and where we should consider other options.&lt;p&gt;Something I haven&amp;#x27;t seen discussed anywhere, but to me is almost obvious - these various wave generators we see in discussion for off-shore use. Is there a way that technology can be used in the Columbia, Snake, etc without the need for a dam? At the same time too often in these discussions there are other issues overlooked - like how much Washington &amp;#x2F; Oregon wheat goes down the river on barges that would otherwise be tractor trailers on the highways. Lots of problems to solve.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>freedomben</author><text>I tend to agree.  I consider myself an environmentalist, and I&amp;#x27;ve also come to recognize that these issues can be complicated.  Progress is made iteratively and sometimes gradually.  While I would love to drop a hammer on the over-fishing of Pacific Salmon for example, when you meet a person who lives in Homer Alaska and lives off of their fishing and you realize that if we completely shut down fishing for a year or two, that person would be economically destroyed.  That&amp;#x27;s just one person in the equation.  There are many thousands more.  There are ways to improve the salmon population without wiping people out or causing major havoc, but it requires people to learn a whole lot more about the issues than what can be reduced to sound bytes.</text></comment>