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.
OK Capitalists, flame away!
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