# Dams are bad, MMMkay? environMENTAList rant **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [February 6, 2000, 6:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dams-are-bad-mmmkay-environmentalist-rant/17411 "2000-02-06T06:21:00Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 6\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![disreputable\_1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/76d3ee/32.png) [@disreputable\_1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/disreputable_1)\ **Post date:** [February 7, 2000, 5:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dams-are-bad-mmmkay-environmentalist-rant/17411/21 "2000-02-07T05:09:00Z")
> [@](#): > > 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. ---
**Author:** ![Ringo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/779978/32.png) [@Ringo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ringo)\ **Post date:** [February 7, 2000, 5:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dams-are-bad-mmmkay-environmentalist-rant/17411/22 "2000-02-07T05:18:00Z")
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? . . . 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. ---
**Author:** ![TBone2](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/6a8cbe/32.png) [@TBone2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TBone2)\ **Post date:** [February 7, 2000, 5:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dams-are-bad-mmmkay-environmentalist-rant/17411/23 "2000-02-07T05:32:00Z")
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. _I don’t know why fortune smiles on some and lets the rest go free…_ T ---
**Author:** ![Ringo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/779978/32.png) [@Ringo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ringo)\ **Post date:** [February 7, 2000, 5:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dams-are-bad-mmmkay-environmentalist-rant/17411/24 "2000-02-07T05:46:00Z")
> [@](#): > > I’m thinking that this one should be diverted to Great Debates. It’s WAY too big for GQ. Uh…, look around. ---
**Author:** ![TBone2](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/6a8cbe/32.png) [@TBone2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TBone2)\ **Post date:** [February 7, 2000, 6:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dams-are-bad-mmmkay-environmentalist-rant/17411/25 "2000-02-07T06:17:00Z")
Boy, is MY face red!!! :o Sorry, folks! (…he said sheepishly as he retired to his cave…) * * * _I don’t know why fortune smiles on some and lets the rest go free…_ T ---
**Author:** ![RobRoy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/7ba0ec/32.png) [@RobRoy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RobRoy)\ **Post date:** [February 7, 2000, 6:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dams-are-bad-mmmkay-environmentalist-rant/17411/26 "2000-02-07T06:20:00Z")
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. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/dams-are-bad-mmmkay-environmentalist-rant/17411.md?page=1)