Dams are bad, MMMkay? environMENTAList rant

[kuwatto]

IMHO dams are bad, in fact, I think in the next 50 years a lot of these big federal dams built ½ a century ago or more are going to be torn down. Why? Because like nuclear power plants, the long-term consequences were unknown at the time they were built. Now we have aging dams filling up with silt and huge stockpiles of nuclear waste that will be around waiting for someone at a later date to clean up our mess. The average Joe in America sees a dam as a timeless piece of engineering, the American version of the great pyramids. But they are so very, very temporary, and doing so much damage in the meantime.

The perfect example of a worthless federal dam is Glen Canyon Dam on the Colorado River. It has little or no justification, now and when it was built. My first impression before doing research on this issue was that the Glen Canyon Dam needed to be decommissioned to restore an area that was so stunningly beautiful it should have been a national park. But I was taken aback at the horrific extent of the damage that this dam will impose on the river and neighboring area in the near future, as if what has happened already isn’t bad enough.

The Colorado River is one of the most silt laden rivers in the world, before dams people described it as “too thick to drink, too thin to plow”. Glen Canyon Dam traps all this silt, in fact in the 40 years since the lake started to fill it has already lost about 5% of it volume to sedimentation. So by that rational in 200 years the lake will be completely filled in with silt, and the Colorado will turn its attention to Lake Mead and Hoover Dam.

As if that wasn’t bad enough, the silt is toxic. The area the river drains is largely composed of sedimentary rock, the detritus of the Rocky Mountains washed into a prehistoric sea. Because of this the sedimentary rock, and the sediment from it the river carries is very high in trace minerals and salts which are building up in Lake Powell. So not only does the future for the lake look like a giant mud flat, it will be toxic as well.

Furthermore, once the lake is full of silt the river cannot push its silt burden across a flat plane. Instead it spreads out, drops the silt, repeats, until it establishes a gradient to carry the silt downstream, dropping about 1-2 feet per mile should do it. So to transport the silt all the way down the 180 miles of impounded river to the dam the Colorado is going to build a huge silt ramp up the river as many as 200+ miles potentially destroying Canyonlands & Arches National Parks, and Moab Utah. Major Bummer.

So, you’re probably thinking right now extreme and irreparable environmental damage is a small price to pay for the cheap electricity, drought protection, jobs, recreation, and other benefits we currently enjoy from this. But before you tell me it will wreck the economy to pull the plug on it listen to this. This dam in particular generates less than 2% of the power in its regional power grid. This could easily be compensated for, especially if the government dropped subsidies on electricity (which is a another rant all together), which might prompt consumers to be more energy efficient. Drought protection? I think not, vast amounts of water are lost each year through evaporation and absorption into the porous surrounding sandstone. I can’t remember the exact amount, but the value in Los Angeles $ for that water is many, many millions.

Topping it all off there are several federal endangered species projects upstream and down spending lots and lots of taxpayer money trying to restore the original ecosystem. They are band-aid approaches to the larger problem of the dam, tons of money will continue to be spent, and no progress can be made as long as the dam is in place.

So, what to do? I think the ethical, scientific, and moral decision is to drain the lake while we can still restore a national treasure. It’s not to late! Check out the link if you doubt any of my claims.
www.glencanyon.org (http://www.glencanyon.org)

OK Capitalists, flame away!

[tracer]

Now we have aging dams filling up with silt

How does a dam fill up with silt?

[Imthecowgodmoo]

So, you’re probably thinking right now extreme and irreparable environmental damage is a small price to pay for the cheap electricity, drought protection, jobs, recreation, and other benefits we currently enjoy from this.

Somehow I get this feeling that you're one of those tree-huggers that believe in Global Warming and its terrible effect on the ice caps.

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"People must think it must be fun to be a super genuis,
But they don't realize how hard it is
to put up with all the idiots in the world."
-- Calvin and Hobbes
(__)
_\/_

[GuanoLad]

Irreparable environmental damage. There's a phrase that gets thrown about a lot.

Okay, I don't know a lot about this, but though I admit that you can never get back what you've lost from nature, it is neverthless a hell of a lot more resilient than most people give it credit for.

It can bounce back, it can take control again, nature is the most powerful force on this earth, and long after we are gone at last from here, nature will carry on growing, evolving, and creating more life.

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-PIGEONMAN-
Returns!

The Legend Of PigeonMan (http://www.hotkey.net.au/~guanolad/pigeonman/) - By Popular Demand! Enjoy, enjoy!

[Ike Witt]

There is one sure way to make environmentalists happy. First we 'cull' earths population down to about 20 million, and then we return to the hunter-gatherer life style. No more greenhouse gases, CFC's, PCB's or dioxin or anything else that is bad. Fish stocks would rebound forests would flourish. Of course within a couple of generations the remaining environmentalists will complain that the supply of flint and chert used to make stone tools is being over-mined...

[WillGolfForFood]

Originally posted by kuwatto:
Now we have aging dams filling up with silt and huge stockpiles of nuclear waste

Well hey, we've got to put all of that nuclear waste *somewhere*. Might as well stuff it into our aging dams so we know where it all is.

[Sam Stone]

Ok, let's see... Dams are out. Nuclear power is out. How about coal plants? Natural gas?

Just what form of power generation ARE you in favor of? Please give us some environmental cost-benefit claims to back up your choices. Or, if you don't like any of them, tell us what the alternatives are.

[BurnMeUp]

Another funny thing about environmentalists, they always look to save the fish and the animals, but are against humanity doing anything to progress if it puts an animal in jeopardy.

When did a human come to hate himself so much that he values an animal above himself.

It's just sad.

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If you feel that you must suffer, then plan your suffering carefully--as you choose your dreams, as you conceive your ancestors.

[disreputable_1]

Originally posted by kuwatto:
Drought protection? I think not, vast amounts of water are lost each year through evaporation and absorption into the porous surrounding sandstone. I can’t remember the exact amount, but the value in Los Angeles $ for that water is many, many millions.


Of course you will share with us your cost-effective idea for providing a reliable water supply for the growing populations of the southwest US.

[kuwatto]

Tracer,
Rivers generally do not run crystal clear, when they hit the still water of a resevoir or large body of water like an ocean, they drop whatever has been suspended in their current and start to form deltas. Every dam ever constructed will eventually fill up completely with silt, that is if they don't fail from flood, earthquake, or just old age.

Dhanson,
That is the million dollar question. Coal plants and natural gas are no good either, for the obvious reasons. Other than solar and wind power at the present there are no alternatives. So we can put more effort into making those clean technologies more feasable, and developing new cleaner methods of generating power. Or just say oh well and see what happens and never actually progress and learn from our mistakes, most people want to do the latter. Chicken shits.

Desreputable_1,
I think you missed the whole point, the dam isn't necassary. Hoover, just down stream, stores more water the Glen Canyon. Parker and Davis dams below Hoover are the ones that distribute the water to Pheonix and LA. To reiterate, Glen Canyon is in a desert, there is this thing called evaporation, ever heard of it? On a 180 mile long lake with over a thousand miles of shoreline a lot of water is evaporating and sinking into the surrounding area. The value of this water lost is in the hundreds of millions of dollars and would be very usefull in these growing ares instead of being wasted. It's not like we can make more if we need it!?

I used Glen Canyon as an example because the character of the Colorado guarantees that it will be a short lived dam ( along with the others below it), it is actually feasable economically to remove that dam, and it's justifications for existence are very weak anyways.

There are a series of dams on the lower Snake River right now that are much more likely to be drained to try to restore Salmon runs. The barging industry built around these will be killed of course, and local shipping will have to resort to train transport. I guess I feel that this is not that much different than when entire communities have been drowned under almost every large dam that has been constructed, after all it is for the good of the nation! Right!

And if all you had to post was an insult towards environmentalists, it is because you cannot refute the argument, you're just being a pig-headed troll. Try to make a constructive argument.

[kuwatto]

OK Tracer, ha, ha, stupid me gets it now!

[WillGolfForFood]

Originally posted by kuwatto:
As if that wasn’t bad enough, the silt is toxic.

If that's the case, the only moral thing to do is to build more dams to retain all of that toxic silt, rather than continue to dump it into the next state down the line. Your dog should do its pooping in your own yard, not in mine.

(I live on the East coast, so I'm not affected by the presence or absence of the toxic silt in question. I *am* affected, however, by the air pollution generated by coal-burning energy plants in the states to the west of me. My state dumps its coal-burning air pollution in the Atlantic Ocean, the way God intended :) )

[Ringo]

I'm not sure I really understand the complaint of the OP. All of the mechanics of sediment transportation and deposition described work in exactly the same way in naturally occurring lakes. Should we fill them in before they become "toxic" plains, as well?

BTW, at 5% of original volume lost per 40 years, I get about 800 years until 100% volume loss; that's not too bad a service run for a civil engineering project.

And I am unfamiliar with the silt ramp project described. How will it ruin the parks mentioned?

The idea of "restoring" an original ecosystem seems particularly short-sighted. When you consider the Alps are composed of sea floor deposits, you must recognize that the whole thing is going to change.

IIRC, much of the dam construction in this country began as an effort to use federal spending to put a lot of people to work during the Depression.

[tracer]

kuwatto wrote:

On a 180 mile long lake with over a thousand miles of shoreline a lot of water is evaporating and sinking into the surrounding area. The value of this water lost is in the hundreds of millions of dollars and would be very usefull in these growing ares instead of being wasted.

As opposed to all that water that would be wasted by letting it run out into the ocean if we didn't use dams?

[kuwatto]

Well to address your first point, it is the nature of the geology of the area. The basin that the colorado drains is largely sedimentary rock ABNORMALLY high in trace mineral and salts. Most systems either do not have this problem, or since it is natural it has been around for a LONG time and has stabilized. Life could exist there, but only the hardiest species, which would have high amounts of toxins in their flesh. Normally this would be carried down to the Sea of Cortez where the problem is diluted by the much, much larger environment(the ocean).

Ok, so during the lifespan of the dam how much money are we going to spend to keep it running? The intakes for power generation are located at the bottom, they will clog early on and require constant dredging to keep open. How much money are we going to spend on federal programs to save the ecosystem that has been destroyed. Better kill the endangered species act if you want to make that dam worth your while.

The parks mentioned are just upstream, less than 100 miles, the ramping problem wont manifest until a significant amount of the, ahem, resevoir is filled with silt so it is still several hundred years away.

The whole frickin North American continent may someday not exist, so by your rational since everything is impemanent it has no value. Whatever! The dam was a mistake, it can be removed, and yes the origonal ecosystem does have value.

Yes, Hoover, Grand Coulee and other projects in the 30's were significant in getting the country out of the depression, so was WWII. Just because something was built 70 years ago does not justify its exhistence. What I am trying to get at is that we don't have to live by our ancestors mistakes, let's learn from them. The best use of our rivers is not to impound them repeatedly on their way to the sea.

[Ringo]

I'm really having trouble with the point of the OP. A sweeping statement was made condemning the building of all dams, but the focus seems to be one in particular.

Anyway, onward...

Most systems either do not have this problem, or since it is natural it has been around for a LONG time and has stabilized.

I know I didn't understand that part.

And I still don't know how the silt ramp project will destroy the parks.

[Falcon]

The basin that the colorado drains is largely sedimentary rock ABNORMALLY high in trace mineral and salts. Cite? It would seem to me that the life in the area would ahve adapted to this. Also, in my work as an environmental consultant, I have never heard of this problem....only thing I've ever heard of is ARTIFICIAL pollutants, not natural ones.

[kuwatto]

Beatle,
hopefully this will answer your question, look for the part about the process called "aggradization". Cool word. www.glencanyon.org/HP98rich.htm (http://www.glencanyon.org/HP98rich.htm)

Falcon,
That problem is breifly touched on in the "water quality" portion. I did a project on this and e-mailed Dave Wegner about exactly what do trace metals and salts do, but that was a long time ago, he had a really good reply but it is long ago deleted. In a nutshell he described the same thing I have here. www.glencanyon.org/HP98davew.htm (http://www.glencanyon.org/HP98davew.htm)

And finally a speach by Dan Beard, former Commisioner of the Federal Bureau of Reclamation (the federal agency that builds and runs a lot of these dams), it conveys what I am trying to say so much better. www.glencanyon.org/DOCS.HTM#Beard (http://www.glencanyon.org/DOCS.HTM#Beard)

I must say, I'm having a bit of a problem with the whole 'toxic silt' idea myself. Are you saying that we're somehow causing the environment to poison the environment by allowing it to stay where it is rather than wash downstream?

Condemning dams in particular seems a bit short sighted, considering that they're just one small part of the massive reworking of the landscape mankind has found it beneficial to undertake. Now if it's a wholesale reversion to a state of nature yer after, I for one would have started with the highways, railways, and airlines. Reclaim the pavement and railbeds in the name of the environment and the ripple effect would get you much closer to the goal of 1.8 children, a cat, a wok, and a cotton bedspread in every teepee.

On the other hand, just removing the few dams ye've mentioned here would effectively wipe out a good portion of the population of California, and I find that a difficult goal to argue with . . .


Dr. Watson
"The reason why the race of man moves slowly is because it must move all together."
-- Thomas Brackett Reed

[Scoop]

I'm pretty strongly in favor of preservation, but the idea of removing dams is pure environmentalist bravado. I don't know a whole lot about this particular dam, but you usually can't just remove a dam without causing some harm to the river in the removal. Secondly, you can't reasonably remove a source of power without a viable replacement - which solar and wind powered electricity unfortunately are not. As it is now, dams provide cheap, clean electricity without the risks of nuclear power. It's not perfect and it eventually has to be changed. But until then, it's the best we got and environmental attention should be focused where it will help. I don't know if the situation is different in Colorado, but here in Washington people whine about the salmon and then leave their lights on all night. Only when the power problem is solved will removing the dams be an option.

[disreputable_1]

Originally posted by kuwatto:
Desreputable_1, I think you missed the whole point, the dam isn't necassary. Hoover, just down stream, stores more water the Glen Canyon. Parker and Davis dams below Hoover are the ones that distribute the water to Pheonix and LA. To reiterate, Glen Canyon is in a desert, there is this thing called evaporation, ever heard of it? On a 180 mile long lake with over a thousand miles of shoreline a lot of water is evaporating and sinking into the surrounding area. The value of this water lost is in the hundreds of millions of dollars and would be very usefull in these growing ares instead of being wasted. It's not like we can make more if we need it!?

I used Glen Canyon as an example because the character of the Colorado guarantees that it will be a short lived dam ( along with the others below it), it is actually feasable economically to remove that dam, and it's justifications for existence are very weak anyways.

I do not believe you truly understand what you were saying. First of all your OP states "dams are bad" implying all dams are bad. When I asked about alternative supplies of water after removal of dams, you go on to say that there are plenty of dams downstream of Glen Canyon for that purpose. So is it just Glen Canyon you have a problem with or all dams? You need to clarify this.

As much as I appreciated the science lesson, I had already heard of evaporation as I'm sure the Corps of Engineers and the water agencies have also heard of it. Rest assured, evaporative losses are well accounted for in their numbers and are a relative drop in the bucket (pun intended).

I think you may need to learn about something that is foreign to many in the environmental movement - cost benefit analysis. Our society judges that the benefits (cheaper source of water) of these reservoirs created by dams outweigh the costs (including environmental costs). It's that simple.

[QUOTE]And if all you had to post was an insult towards environmentalists, it is because you cannot refute the argument, you're just being a pig-headed troll. Try to make a constructive argument.{/QUOTE]

Also, next time you insult me, please get the name right. It's DIS-reputable, not DES-reputable.

[Ringo]

The word is aggradation, and it describes a process by which a sediment load is deposited when velocity of the transporting water falls off when accumulation behind a barrier to flow is encountered. The process the OP describes concerning deposition of sediment in the reservoir is a combination of aggradtion and progradation. My question is, so what?

You build a dam and a lake accumulates. Along with the building of a lake we witness all the sedimentary/depositional effects associated with the flow of water encountering both a larger body of water as well as an obstruction to flow. Are we surprised? If so, why?

If the good doctor (proprietor of K's link above) is correct in his assessment that some rapids will no longer be rapids, why is that important? If the Glen Canyon ecosystem does not persist in its current form (survive is the wrong way to describe the passage through time - rest assured, an ecosystem will exist), why is that important? Is it more important than the jobs and lives of the humans involved? Why?

OP, you have still failed to address what depositional differences there are between dam lakes and those naturally occurring, or why we shouldn't fill in the lakes.

And how will the silt ramp project "ruin" the parks?

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.
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Well, we look for energy. OP's already identified itself as one who believes capitalists are hostile to the yearnings of humankind to break out of bondage to the energy industry. So I guess it really boils down to... Have you got a better idea? Yeah, wind and solar. Well, make'em work; make them economically effective - their not right now. And as soon as you can make them economically viable, the capitalists will appear to make them reality.

Really...social activism became a cause celebre in a generation in which I grew up. The AIDS activists of the previous decades put me off (and I've nursed down several), not because I felt their angst at the face of death was exaggerated, but because I felt it was misdirected energy. Don't come screaming at me that I must figure out how to take care of your problem; direct that energy toward learning about and solving that problem.

[TBone2]

It is fact that what Mexico receives in the way of Colorado River water is undrinkable and unusable in most ways. But this fact has little to do with the existence of the dams on the mainstem. It has MUCH more to do with the uses of the water retained by those dams.

The Department of the Interior, Bureau of Reclamation has for generations built the dams and administered the resultant water resources, with an eye toward promoting the cultivation of what used to be desert. (The same process created Los Angeles as it is today, in what was once desert, but that's a whole 'nother can o' worms.)

Dam after dam, pump after pump, irrigation after irrigation, leach after leach.... the cycle is endless. The result is a Colorado River entering Mexico that is a mere fraction of what it should be, and polluted to the point where people with the audacity to wade in it are treated to chemical burns for their trouble.

I'm thinking that this one should be diverted to Great Debates. It's WAY too big for GQ.


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I don't know why fortune smiles on some and lets the rest go free...

T

[Ringo]

I'm thinking that this one should be diverted to Great Debates. It's WAY too big for GQ.

Uh..., look around.

[TBone2]

Boy, is MY face red!!!

:o

Sorry, folks! (...he said sheepishly as he retired to his cave...)



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I don't know why fortune smiles on some and lets the rest go free...

T

[RobRoy]

And in Egypt they damned the Nile at Aswan and now they wonder why there is poor soil down river.

Hmmmmmmmm, maybe it comes down the Nile every year in the inundation, just like it says on a thousand monuments and a a hundred history books.

They are about to damn the Yellow River in China. Visit there now if you can. You know those picturesque paintings with the out croppings and mist? They soon, like the "fertile delta" will be gone too.