[HN Gopher] Regulators OK largest dam demolition in history to r...
___________________________________________________________________
Regulators OK largest dam demolition in history to restore salmon
habitat
Author : DoreenMichele
Score : 175 points
Date : 2022-11-20 04:17 UTC (2 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.oregonlive.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.oregonlive.com)
| Loic wrote:
| Answering in one go the comments of yread and rapsey.
|
| The dams are all really old (50's and 60's) with low power output
| (about 20MW). Maintaining them costs a lot and I suppose that if
| the owners agreed and partially funded the demolition is that it
| was cheaper to do it than to maintain the dams.
|
| It means that if you look at the limited scope of the involved
| parties: "nature, salmons, energy production and maintenance"
| this is the best path forward and a win-win situation.
|
| Of course we lose "reliable" power production, but because of the
| limited power production of these old dams, I for once agree with
| the ability to replace them with other forms of renewable energy
| + storage.
| tohnjitor wrote:
| Why the scare quotes around reliable?
|
| Hydroelectric generation is reliable. So reliable that New York
| State generates approximately 70% of its electricity from
| hydro.
|
| Fashionably, the state government is planning to replace every
| hydro plant with wind or solar over the next 20 years.
| qball wrote:
| >So reliable that New York State generates approximately 70%
| of its electricity from hydro.
|
| Which, it's worth noting, is also the proportion Canada's
| national electricity production happens to be. And of that
| remaining fraction, half is nuclear.
|
| Canada has very favorable geography for hydroelectric
| generation to the point where they're synonyms (people will
| sometimes call it "the hydro" here). Having vast quantities
| of unproductive land on what's functionally bedrock is still
| sometimes useful.
| alex_duf wrote:
| I'm assuming in this context OP made a reference to how solar
| + wind + battery is often seen as unreliable (intermittent).
| So by opposition hydro would be reliable.
|
| but describing renewables like wind and solar is missing the
| whole picture.
|
| Now I might be completely off track and putting words in the
| mouth of OP without any proof. Just a hunch.
| rowls66 wrote:
| Not sure if NYS generates 70% of its electricity from hydro,
| but is possible that 70% of the electricity that NYS consumes
| comes from hydro. I believe that NYS imports a lot of
| electricity from Canada where it is generated from hydro.
| richiebful1 wrote:
| It looks like NYS produces most of its electricity from
| natural gas. https://www.eia.gov/state/?sid=NY#tabs-4
|
| Washington State is the only one I can think of that produces
| that much hydro energy:
| https://www.eia.gov/state/index.php?sid=WA#tabs-4
| onion2k wrote:
| _Hydroelectric generation is reliable._
|
| Even when the dam is 70 years old?
| [deleted]
| twiddling wrote:
| Silt Happens
| greendave wrote:
| Hydro _can_ be reliable. But out in the drought-prone west it
| has not been especially so. California generated 33GWh from
| large hydro in 2019 (14.6% of total production) vs. 15Gwh
| (7.5%) of total production in 2021. 2022 will likely be
| worse.
| Loic wrote:
| I put the quotes there because at least in Europe, during
| peak summer time and now during the winter, we cannot
| reliably use the dams because of the lack of water.
|
| The dams are not anymore as "reliable" as they used to be,
| not because of the construction, but because of the global
| evolution of the environment.
| jl6 wrote:
| For comparison, a single GE Haliade-X wind turbine can output
| 14MW at peak.
| yread wrote:
| And can you switch it on when you need to cover the peak of
| electricity consumption like with a dam? No. You need a gas
| turbine.
| yread wrote:
| How bad is a gas turbine? The biggest dam produced 113TWh
| [1]. Assuming half of that was peak load that needs to be
| replaced by a gas turbine running (and ignoring the other
| half), that will produce 35.000t CO2e per year [2].
|
| If 1kg of salmon swims upstream how much CO2 does it
| sink/add to natural process? Wouldn't it not happen in
| another river? Or the ocean? Let's say it's 10kg (ie.
| 10:1). Will 3.500 t/year more of salmon swim upstream
| Klamath river?
|
| There used to be a lot more salmon in rivers. There also
| used to be a lot more salmon in the sea. Are there a lot
| that don't have anywhere to go? Salmons are said to return
| to their birth place. I think it's fair to say no salmons
| alive were born in the upper Klamath river as it's been
| dammed for the past 70 years. Will they go there if they
| haven't been born there?
|
| Climate change is also affecting salmons with NOAA at some
| point made a prediction there won't be more salmon runs by
| 2100, due to warmer streams and acidification [3].
|
| Or did the company running the dams just saw them as
| uneconomical and it was happy that the state will pay part
| of the demolition costs to the tune of 250M$ (out of 450M
| total) [4]?
|
| [1]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_Gate_Dam_(California)
|
| [2] https://www.rensmart.com/Calculators/KWH-to-CO2
|
| [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salmon_run#Prospects
|
| [4]https://www.mercurynews.com/2016/04/07/klamath-river-
| dam-rem...
| soperj wrote:
| Salmon have a 4 year life-cycle, so definitely none have
| been born in the upper Klamath. Doesn't matter if they'll
| go there, they'll stock the upper Klamath with fry, and
| in 4 years you'll have returnees.
|
| The company is Berkshire Hathaway by the way, and the
| main reason that they saw them as uneconomical is that
| the state has introduced legislation that they have to
| provide by-passes for the fish, and it would have cost
| more to retro-fit that to demo them.
| pencilguin wrote:
| None of these dams ever produced more than the tiniest
| fraction of even just the _commercial_ value of the
| fisheries they destroyed. They totally didn 't care.
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| keep in mind that this is also an area that's been facing
| more severe drought more regularly, so the dam isn't going
| to be an eternally reliable source either
| xyzzyz wrote:
| Severe droughts are a reason to _build_ more dams, not to
| demolish them.
| bobthepanda wrote:
| For the purposes of keeping water, it wouldn't be that
| useful.
|
| The Klamath is far from major population centers, and is
| not currently part of any long-distance water transfer.
| (It's been proposed but has actually been opposed by not
| only the local fisheries industry but by California.)
|
| Also I think the grandparent is talking more about power
| generation; there needs to be a baseline level of water
| to generate power, and they already don't generate a
| whole lot. Holding back water also means it isn't getting
| used for power generation.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| To the contrary. Dams keep water from everything
| downstream so the recovery from a drought takes much
| longer.
| xyzzyz wrote:
| Dams can release water downstream as needed. Without
| them, water would just drain out to sea/ocean in the wet
| season, and in the dry season would be completely gone.
| Without dams, American southwest literally wouldn't
| exist.
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| Yeah the part you're missing is that the area that
| controls the dam often wants to keep as much water as
| possible during times of drought, so there's often a
| local power struggle... this very dam has faced similar
| control debates.
| xyzzyz wrote:
| Without a dam, during times of drought, the downstream
| party does not have water either. It is the very presence
| of the dam that enables considerations of this sort.
| Without it, the water just drains to the ocean quickly,
| and neither upstream nor downstream gets any water during
| dry season.
| onion2k wrote:
| _You need a gas turbine._
|
| Or a battery.
| rob74 wrote:
| Or a (pumped-storage) hydroelectric plant, to take the
| discussion back (almost) full circle.
| jmartrican wrote:
| Or "a single GE Haliade-X wind turbine can output 14MW at
| peak."
| theptip wrote:
| You want some storage for when the wind isn't blowing.
| hoseja wrote:
| , for which you don't have to destroy a river habitat.
| subradios wrote:
| Nope. Most buffering in the US as deployed is natgas, not
| poison the water lithium.
| SketchySeaBeast wrote:
| Isn't it a choice of "poison the water" or poison the
| air? Are we under the assumption that natural gas is
| clean?
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| No power plant works in a vacuum. Nuclear power plants
| require a connection to the grid to stay functional, as the
| biggest one in Europe has shown.
| soperj wrote:
| > Nuclear power plants require a connection to the grid
| to stay functional, as the biggest one in Europe has
| shown.
|
| Not the case for all Nuclear, just really old nuclear.
| All the ones in Canada (CANDU reactors) have the rods
| suspended by electromagnets, if the station stops
| producing power, they drop into the reactor, ending
| criticality. They also use unenriched uranium (or
| plutonium or thorium).
| patmorgan23 wrote:
| Oh no. We have to keep the thing powering the grid
| connected to it. This will be such a huge logistical
| hurdle. /s
| rayiner wrote:
| "Connection to the grid" versus "storage capacity that
| doesn't exist yet" is quite a difference.
| indymike wrote:
| Most large power generation facilities must be connected
| to a load (grid) to operate, nuclear or not.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| To _operate_ yes... but to keep safe when the grid goes
| out? _Only_ NPPs require a permanent grid connection to
| not blow up. That is the key issue with the Zaporizhzhia
| NPP - it has been shut down for months, but still the
| rods need to be cooled, and it 's a massive logistical
| challenge and an absurd amount of risk involved in
| keeping the grid connection alive and the backup
| generators supplied with diesel fuel.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| > _NPPs require a permanent grid connection to not blow
| up_
|
| There is no risk of nuclear power stations blowing up if
| a power cable breaks!
| indymike wrote:
| > Only NPPs require a permanent grid connection to not
| blow up.
|
| This is untrue, and in the next sentence you contradict
| this statement when you mention the backup to the power
| grid: diesel generators which are substantially more
| portable, and less powerful than an entire energy grid.
| jollyllama wrote:
| Sounds good, where's the plan to replace the capacity?
| jasonwatkinspdx wrote:
| One of my friends used to work for the state of Oregon as an
| economist doing analysis related to these dam demolitions.
|
| They are a good thing for the environment, full stop.
|
| The loss of hydro with these smaller damns is not material.
| Their impact on hundreds of miles of habitat is. And for those
| who only want to think in terms of material wealth, there's
| real money in restoring salmon populations.
|
| So please don't do the hackernews reflexive contrarian thing
| and be all "well look at those idiots don't they see we need
| every bit of green hydro power that exists?" because the real
| analysis being doing is years worth of sophisticated
| measurement and modeling. You haven't somehow outsmarted that
| with your off the cuff observation.
|
| Edit:
|
| I guess I can mention a bit more without too much risk to my
| friend's privacy. During the years he was working as a part of
| this we were on vacation together at one point, and we ended up
| pairing on some problems he was having getting his R model
| working with ArcGIS. The task he was working on was modeling
| the changes in large herbivore populations that would result
| from various changes to the rivers.
|
| There are tons of these downstream effects that depend on the
| river. Losing the power generation is just one concern among
| 100s.
|
| So yeah, they thought very deeply about the implications and
| tradeoffs here.
| daniel-cussen wrote:
| davidw wrote:
| Oregon hires some cool economists. Josh Lehner, here in Bend
| is just full of interesting information about the state. The
| Oregon econ blog is good reading and not technical or
| anything https://oregoneconomicanalysis.com/
| jeffbee wrote:
| I think it's pretty clear from the comments that the
| hackernewses are simply assigning zero value to the fish.
| Which ironically aligns them with the big wealthy interests
| of decades long past: the rich farmers who advocated for
| building these dams.
| MSFT_Edging wrote:
| Its the brainworms asking, "What do I get out of this?".
|
| Folks have been tricked into thinking that things
| can/should only exist if they serve some productive force.
| jeffbee wrote:
| I guess that _is_ a point of view, but even from that
| perspective you can eat the fish.
| bobthepanda wrote:
| Right, fisheries is one of the big industries in the US,
| not to mention that HN also whinges about overfishing in
| other articles
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| > Which ironically aligns them with the big wealthy
| interests
|
| What is ironic about that do you ever read comments on this
| site?
| dsfyu404ed wrote:
| >So please don't do the hackernews reflexive contrarian thing
| and be all "well look at those idiots don't they see we need
| every bit of green hydro power that exists?" because the real
| analysis being doing is years worth of sophisticated
| measurement and modeling. You haven't somehow outsmarted that
| with your off the cuff observation.
|
| You can't fight religion with logical analysis.
| munificent wrote:
| I was reading about a dam demolition in Washington a while
| back and the bit that really helped me wrap my head around it
| was this:
|
| _Salmon are one of the primary pipelines to transfer
| calories from the ocean inland._
|
| Those calories--by that I mean a shorthand for "nutrition"--
| naturally get washed from land out to sea by stuff dying in
| rivers, rainfall, etc. Without some engine that cycles that
| material back into inland areas, you don't have a functioning
| cyclic sustainable ecosystem.
|
| Salmon get eaten by bears whose poop feeds plants that are
| eaten by herbivores. An incredible amount of the natural
| world in salmon areas depends on this pipeline running. When
| you stop the salmon, you stop the entire circulatory system.
| EdwardDiego wrote:
| IIRC there's entire forest ecosystems that evolved to be
| fertilized by hunted salmon.
|
| https://web.uvic.ca/~reimlab/salmonforest.html
| fshbbdssbbgdd wrote:
| That's an impressive fact. I would have guessed birds would
| do most of that work.
| MichaelCollins wrote:
| The birds probably help a lot too, particularly
| eating/spreading the salmon scraps the bears leave
| behind.
| steve_adams_86 wrote:
| I've been making this case here in BC since the BC Hydro
| company began pushing hard for a new large dam in Northern
| BC.
|
| It's remarkable how well hydro was greenwashed.
|
| People think I'm an idiot when I saw we should generate power
| another way. They're incredulous. How could a dam even cause
| environmental damage? It's such a limited scope. We have ways
| of allowing fish to spawn past the dam. No big deal.
|
| Here we have environmentalists who are pro hydro and anti-
| nuclear. It's surreal.
| lalalandland wrote:
| Dams produce huge amounts of methane when organic materials
| in the dam shore line get exposed to high and low water.
| AdamN wrote:
| It's depressing that a modern country like Canada would
| even consider building a major dam anymore :-(
| mjhay wrote:
| If you think that's bad, wait until you here about what
| the Canadian government wants to do with the vast taiga
| forests.
|
| My (unscientific) observation is that some Canadians get
| stuck in a frontier mentality, kind of thinking that the
| resources and resilience of their huge and sparsely
| populated landmass is inexhaustible. Especially with
| forestry, they do stuff all the time that would never fly
| in the US.
| steve_adams_86 wrote:
| Forestry is a disaster here. Especially when you consider
| how integral those forests are to our water cycle.
| Deforestation has direct and significant impacts on local
| and global cycles.
|
| As models become more detailed we only discover more ways
| this matters. It's unsettling to see here in western
| Canada. Knowing we're doing things like cutting trees to
| turn into pellet stock to get burned in the UK... and we
| justify it as "it's not like those trees were valuable as
| timber". No, they were valuable for capturing moisture,
| encouraging rain, and keeping our watersheds working.
|
| What's the plan for the taiga?
|
| Another thing I've been considering is that we take this
| position because the bleak reality is that our rate of
| resource extraction is not scalable, but it's the only
| thing that has ever allowed Canada to become relatively
| wealthy. We are not good at producing things of value. We
| do it, but not nearly as much as we should.
|
| If we pull back on extraction, we can expect to live
| poorer lives unless we can participate in the global
| economy in a way in which we create things of value
| rather than just mine, deforest, frack, drill, and so on
| at huge scales.
| soperj wrote:
| The major dam in Northern BC kind of makes sense in the
| sense that they've already got 2 major dams on that river
| already, but it poisons everything. It's not just salmon,
| it's methylmercury accumulation in the fish in all the
| rivers in the surrounding area, it's high levels of methane
| release as trees decay for a hundred plus years in
| anaerobic environments because they didn't clear the forest
| before flooding the area that's not Williston lake.
| Blocking of sedimentation makes it so the rest of the river
| is less actually habitable for spawning fish as well, so
| double whammy on that front, since not only is the sediment
| blocked, the water is still flowing, eroding what's left.
| concordDance wrote:
| Elevated water is very good energy storage. I suspect they have
| no viable energy storage plan to replace it.
| [deleted]
| hannob wrote:
| > The dams are all really old (50's and 60's) with low power
| output (about 20MW).
|
| This obviously raises the question of how much power output
| they could produce if you'd convert them to modern technology.
| nopenopenopeno wrote:
| like nuclear
| londons_explore wrote:
| They couldn't produce more _energy_ in a year, since that is
| limited by the rainfall and dam height.
|
| But with a redesign/upgrade, they could probably produce more
| _power_ at peak times. That allows the dam to be used like a
| peaker plant, earning far more per MWh than a coal plant. As
| more wind and solar is deployed, the difference between the
| peak and average energy prices will only increase.
| Steltek wrote:
| I could be wrong but I don't think hydro has a low enough
| spin-up time to be useful as a peaker plant.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Hydro ramp is very quick, only limited by the delay in
| mechanical inertia of the turbine and generator rotors.
| Most dams can be at peak output in ~10 seconds.
|
| With that said, these particular generators can be
| replaced with renewables and batteries trivially (and the
| costs are even more reasonable with the recent passing of
| the inflation reduction act) due to their smallish
| capacity (~200 acres of land for 20MW solar, small
| footprint for the storage system).
| BurningFrog wrote:
| > _these particular generators can be replaced with
| renewables and batteries trivially_
|
| Renewables and batteries can be _added_ trivially. I don
| 't see how that means the dams should be torn down.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Because they're detrimental to the biome in this case.
| Every evaluation will be different, each with nuance.
|
| EDIT: I think, importantly, that these decisions should
| require the replacement of generation capacity lost with
| clean generation and storage as part of the cost benefit
| analysis.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| > _Because they're detrimental to the biome in this case_
|
| That's a good reason.
|
| My point is/was that that is unrelated to renewables and
| batteries.
| bobthepanda wrote:
| That may not even be necessary.
|
| This demolition happened in Oregon. Despite a growing
| population and increasingly hot summers, Oregon's
| electricity use peaked in 2000.
| https://www.oregon.gov/energy/energy-oregon/Pages/How-
| Oregon...
|
| US energy demand has been plateauing for a while as well:
| https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=38572
| Retric wrote:
| EV's are likely to offset that long term trend.
|
| However, electricity is very low on the utility provided
| by dams. Reducing flooding and stabilizing the water
| supply tend to be vastly more valuable in most areas.
| pencilguin wrote:
| The value extracted from the dams was never more than a
| tiny fraction of just the _commercial_ value of the
| fishery each eliminated, wholly leaving aside the matter
| of causing extinctions.
|
| California's system with dams near peaks of the Sierra
| Nevada range, feeding penstocks to thousands of meters
| below, is both massively more efficient and causes
| nowhere near the ecological damage of the river valley
| dams being torn down.
|
| Those were largely built in the 1920s with pulley-
| operated (pre-hydraulics) equipment trailered up on
| abysmally bad roads... that still exist, unimproved.
| heavenlyblue wrote:
| I do not understand, what is quicker to spin up than a
| hydro power plant? Surely it's slower to heat up coal to
| the burning temperature than just opening the tap with
| water.
| LeifCarrotson wrote:
| Natural gas turbines are quicker to spin up than a hydro
| turbine.
| poooogles wrote:
| That's not correct. Siemens energy turbines list the
| start up time as 10 minutes [1]. Pumped storage takes in
| the realm of 20 seconds [2].
|
| 1. https://www.siemens-
| energy.com/global/en/offerings/services/... 2.
| https://www.power-
| technology.com/analysis/featuredinorwig-a-...
| wongarsu wrote:
| Pumped hydro is the textbook example of a fast peaker
| plant, with startup times measured in seconds, as opposed
| to the minutes of gas and hours of coal plants.
|
| You usually roughly follow the demand curve with hydro,
| coal and nuclear, fill in the gaps of their reaction time
| with gas (though preferably keeping the gas plant above
| their minimum load of ~40% during the day), and fill in
| the gaps of that mix with pumped hydro.
|
| Now if you want to there's no real reason you can't
| outfit a dam like a pumped hydro plant instead of the
| setup of a baseload plant. After all pumped hydro is just
| a reservoir you refill manually when electricity is
| cheap.
| kube-system wrote:
| > They couldn't produce more energy in a year, since that
| is limited by the rainfall and dam height.
|
| Design also dictates the minimum water height that can be
| used to produce power, so a redesign could actually give a
| wider range of water heights at which power generation is
| possible.
|
| And turbine efficiency has improved over the years, so you
| can generate more energy with the same water.
| indymike wrote:
| > This obviously raises the question of how much power output
| they could produce if you'd convert them to modern
| technology.
|
| Maybe 10-15%. AC generation technology has improved
| incrementally (1% here, 4% there), but gains since the 60s
| are not revolutionary leaps.
| Gare wrote:
| Not much more, I'd presume. Hydrology is the limiting factor.
| mullen wrote:
| The problem is not the tech that is in the hydro-generators
| but the dams, themselves, silt up. They hold a lot less water
| and thus, less energy to drive hydro-generators.
|
| To restore a silted up dam, you would have to clean it out,
| which is a whole nother environmental issue in itself.
| bilsbie wrote:
| How will they control yearly flooding along this river?
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| Do they need to? Was that an issue before the dam was built?
|
| Anyway the usual thing to do is to build dams on the sides,
| deepen the river, have flood plains, etc.
| AdamN wrote:
| The best option is to make the flood plains unbuilt and let
| them flood.
| frosted-flakes wrote:
| Dams aren't necessary, but yes, it probably was a problem
| before the dam was built. That's usually _why_ dams are
| built. But I think it 's better to just not build there.
| mjhay wrote:
| I'm guessing they have thought about this and other
| contingencies. Just because somebody isn't a programmer doesn't
| mean they're a moron.
| adql wrote:
| By increasing insurance rates
| mint2 wrote:
| That flooding is actually highly beneficial to the ecosystems
|
| While I don't see a way it's going to reduce future flood
| intensity like regular low intensity fires do, but like regular
| fire it's needed for a lot of the ecosystem balance to function
| as it used to
| perrygeo wrote:
| Yes! The flood dynamics are what create viable salmon
| habitat. The dams are a double-whammy for salmon - salmon
| can't access habitat above them, plus dams alter the natural
| flood regime and destroy habitat below them.
| steve_adams_86 wrote:
| I highly recommend people read about floods and wetlands, and
| how we've tended to destroy wetlands in order to build things
| like highways and buildings. It's incredible how much damage
| wetlands mitigate, and just as critically, how much water
| they stop and put back into the water table.
|
| We do want floods, and we want wetlands to absorb them. Where
| that isn't possible, engineering ways to absorb the water in
| small scale and environmentally friendly ways do exist, too.
| gopher_space wrote:
| One of the concerns with these older, smaller dams is that
| they'll collapse eventually and catastrophically.
|
| They need to be removed because they're old, they won't be
| replaced because there are cheaper alternatives today.
| bilsbie wrote:
| The engineer in me wonders if there's some way we can have dams
| and make salmon happy.
|
| Can we have a small stream that goes around the dam for example?
|
| The salmon ladders In Seattle seem pretty popular with the
| salmon. Can we not build something like that?
| AdamN wrote:
| The other problem is the fish need to go downriver too. The dam
| extracts energy from the water flow and slows down the river -
| making it difficult for newly hatched salmon to even get to the
| ocean in the first place.
|
| The dams simply need to be removed, starting with the ones that
| offer minimal value in other dimensions (electricity, water
| supply, navigable waters, recreation, etc...) until eventually
| the vast majority are gone and only a few are left to protect
| important infrastructure that cannot feasibly be moved.
| kibwen wrote:
| Plenty of dams do have fish ladders, although Wikipedia
| suggests that they're not perfect:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fish_ladder#Effectiveness
| wongarsu wrote:
| They frequently suffer from misaligned incentives, with damns
| mostly being judged by the existence of a fish ladder, not
| its effectiveness. And while a stronger current helps fish
| find the way, that's water that's "lost" for the dam
| operator.
| froj wrote:
| There's this super over-engineered fully automatic fish
| elevator to go up a 20m tall weir [1] (pdf and German warning).
| Interestingly, there is no safe way for the fish to go back
| down, yet.
|
| [1]
| https://www.bkw.ch/fileadmin/bt3_news/MyConvento/2021/10/06/...
| jasonwatkinspdx wrote:
| Most of the big damns up here in the PNW already have fish
| ladders. They help but they only partly mitigate the issue.
|
| There's a pretty crazy company developing this system that
| actually shoots fish up the damn like those pneumatic canisters
| bank drive throughs use (or used?). I just remember seeing a
| video about it but don't know anything more.
| bombcar wrote:
| You can do it - but for the big dams it's too long/tall.
|
| Arguably you could instead of damming a river divert a portion
| of it upstream into a new valley for a lake, leaving the old
| river alone.
| svnt wrote:
| This is a good decision to remove an unnecessary dam to give
| Pacific salmon and their ecosystems a chance to recover.
|
| 0) salmon populations have recently plummeted [0]
|
| 1) fish ladders don't work [1]
|
| 2) even marginally higher river temperatures are problematic for
| salmon [2] and dams raise temperatures in large sections of the
| river
|
| 3) salmon are a keystone species [3]
|
| [0]https://phys.org/news/2021-10-salmon-decline-impacted-
| combin...
|
| [1]
| https://e360.yale.edu/features/blocked_migration_fish_ladder...
|
| [2] https://www.fisheries.noaa.gov/west-coast/climate/river-
| temp...
|
| [3] https://wildsalmoncenter.org/salmon-a-keystone-species/
| vl wrote:
| I was driving through the town called Klamath Falls and asked
| local where are the falls. She said "I've been living here for
| 30 years, there are no falls". I now wonder if there were no
| falls anymore due to the dams.
| coryrc wrote:
| The dams have been there for decades, but only recently
| plummeted and no one can prove why? This doesn't inspire
| confidence.
| perrygeo wrote:
| The salmon populations has been dropping for a century and
| have reached critical levels in the last few decades. This is
| not a recent phenomemon. There are many causes and they are
| understood quite well: dams block spawning habitat, water
| temperature increases, food web collapse, overfishing,
| habitat destruction, and algae blooms from pollution are all
| extensively documented in the literature. Where do you get
| the idea that scientists are flummoxed by this?
| jablala wrote:
| So we're going to fix/build infra so we can get their
| population levels higher... Just so we can eat them.
|
| What a sad world.
| the_doctah wrote:
| Is there a word for species-centrism? Ah, there is. [1]
|
| My point being, this is probably more about food for
| wildlife than humans.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthropocentrism
| jhauris wrote:
| Not just us. Both terrestrial and ocean ecosystems depend
| on salmon.
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| Aren't people eating a lot more salmon now?
|
| I imagine that has something to do with there being less
| salmon...
| pvaldes wrote:
| Yes and not. Most of it is cultured salmon. Cultured and
| wild are linked so in part we could say that "there is
| less wild salmon because people eat more domestic
| salmon". Is complicated.
| ROTMetro wrote:
| They aren't understood well though, are they? I mean they
| JUST discovered the HUGE impact that tire wear runoff from
| roads causes to fish:
|
| https://www.science.org/content/article/common-tire-
| chemical....
| jna_sh wrote:
| I'm not knowledgeable in Pacific Salmon, but this is a
| phenomena seen in lots of species, and has a fairly basic
| biological explanation. A species can be exposed to
| individual threats that they can still cope with and adapt
| to, resulting in little immediate decline. But as more of
| these threats accumulate, eventually the sum of the whole
| overwhelms the species, and can lead to a sudden drop.
|
| A steep drop can follow a more gradual decline, as well, due
| to loss of genetic diversity in the population making the
| population less able to adapt to another unrelated threat.
| Check out the Extinction Vortex.
| svnt wrote:
| The reason why is systemic pressure, as mentioned below, but
| the primary determinant right now seems to be raised river
| temperature which is the result of a number of factors,
| including regional warming and dams, and also results in
| increased toxins.
|
| One of the only practical ways to decrease river temperatures
| is to allow the river to be larger, and to flow -- that is
| accomplished by removing the dams.
| rapsey wrote:
| I don't understand how it makes sense to make these decisions
| one-sided. I have no opinion if demolition is right or not, but
| should it not make sense to also in the same bill fund a project
| to replace the lost power? Same goes for the Diablo canyon power
| plant and those plans for phasing it out.
| snowwrestler wrote:
| The short answer to your question is that energy supply in the
| U.S. is not centrally managed by the government. The U.S.
| energy grid exists as the sum of voluntary private efforts to
| generate power to make money.
|
| The government--actually governments, since there are
| autonomous local, state, and federal layers in the U.S.--do
| play an important role in regulating and coordinating the
| system. But most power generation is not owned or funded by the
| government, and fundamentally it is not the government's
| responsibility to fund new generation.
|
| If there is a forecasted shortfall in energy, that will be
| expressed in prices going up, which will attract investment in
| new generating capacity.
|
| So, we don't need every bit of existing generation to stay
| online. Power plants are idled and decommissioned every year,
| as more efficient (and therefore less expensive) new power
| plants come online and soak up the demand. Hydro power plants
| are not immune from this.
|
| Each decision to build new generating capacity, or take old
| generating capacity offline, is made on its own merits, in the
| context of what people know at that moment. It might seem
| frighteningly disorganized at first, but in the long run it is
| the best way to do things because of the flexibility built into
| the system.
| croo wrote:
| What you described is capitalism as intended. Is this the
| reality or just a few big players and monopolies?
| justin66 wrote:
| > I have no opinion if demolition is right or not, but should
| it not make sense to also in the same bill fund a project to
| replace the lost power?
|
| "Replace the lost power" is something the market will do
| without legislation.
| xroche wrote:
| It is somehow addressed, but with unreliable wind power sources
| that ca'n't be controled:
|
| > We're closing coal plants and building wind farms and it all
| just has to add up in the end. It's not a one-to-one
|
| And of course this won't cover the loss of energy, so let's
| pretend we can do that through "energy efficiency"
|
| >You can make up that power by the way you operate the rest of
| your facilities or having energy efficiency savings so your
| customers are using less
|
| Tl;Dr for the energy side: Smoke and mirrors.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| But you can place a lot more wind farms (at higher total
| capacity) than hydro, which is dependent on environment.
|
| I don't understand the anti-wind sentiment in this thread.
| Yeah it's not ideal, but neither is hydro or nuclear. But all
| of them combined and mixed, they can make up for each other's
| shortfalls.
| Extropy_ wrote:
| Would you mind explaining why nuclear is not ideal?
| rapsey wrote:
| It takes 10 years to build
| mschuster91 wrote:
| 10 years? You're being generous here. Flamanville has
| been under construction since 2007, so at least 15 years
| for construction itself, and anything from 5-10 years for
| planning, acquiring land, relocation...
| mjhay wrote:
| The long timelines and high costs of nuclear in the US
| have very little to do with the limits of the technology.
| daemoens wrote:
| Mjhay is correct. Anti-nuclear activists have
| successfully managed to use the government to stop
| nuclear energy construction for decades. It is entirely a
| political problem, not a technical one.
| godshatter wrote:
| The best time to start building a nuclear power plant is
| 20 years ago; the second best time is today.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| No. The best time today is used for building out absurd
| amounts of renewable power - use geothermal for base load
| and wind/solar for peak load.
| olddustytrail wrote:
| I can give two reasons:
|
| 1. A wind farm is built by a private company in order to
| make a profit selling cheap electricity. A nuclear plant
| is built with vast amounts of taxpayers money to sell
| expensive electricity.
|
| 2. Nuclear is not dispatchable. That means you need
| natural gas turbines, hydro or batteries on your grid to
| provide it. Something that's glossed over by the nuclear
| fans.
| MichaelCollins wrote:
| > _2. Nuclear is not dispatchable._
|
| This is not an intrinsic limitation. Naval nuclear
| reactors can power up to meet demand very rapidly.
| Civilian nuclear reactors aren't built like this for
| various reasons, including gas turbines just being
| cheaper for this purpose.
| joe-collins wrote:
| As another comment said, this dam has been producing power on
| the scale of a single modern wind turbine. Its power generation
| is barely worth mentioning.
| dntrkv wrote:
| You can't compare Diablo Canyon to this situation.
|
| Diablo Canyon has a power output of 2,256MW vs 18MW for this
| tiny dam. This dam is many magnitudes smaller.
|
| The benefit of keeping the minuscule power output vs ecosystem
| damage and maintenance leans heavily towards removal.
| bombcar wrote:
| It's small enough you can just buy them online: https://www.u
| speglobal.com/listings?selected_categories%5B%5...
| yread wrote:
| jasonwatkinspdx wrote:
| Hi, I'm friends with one of the environmental economists that
| worked on the analysis for these damn demolitions in the PNW.
|
| Good news, I can assure you that climate impact was in fact
| _heavily_ analyzed, and removing these dams is in the net, a
| huge win.
|
| So no need for the off the cuff no actual knowledge of the
| situation snark anymore, isn't that great?
| cpursley wrote:
| So screw the wildlife? Isn't that part of the concern about
| climate change - wildlife and ecosystem conservation?
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| Wildlife and ecosystem conservation can be roughly divided
| into two areas of interest:
|
| 1. Functional - all the complex interactions and feedback
| loops that make this planet habitable and comfortable for
| humanity.
|
| 2. Entertainment - look at all those beautiful colors, watch
| all these creatures frolicking (and ignore when they try to
| brutally slaughter each other).
|
| The climate crisis threatens both, but it makes sense to
| focus on the first one first. Yes, it's human-centric, but
| who-else-centric should it be instead? There's hardly a point
| in preserving some wildlife if we erase ourselves from the
| universe in the process.
|
| (At least, I haven't heard any convincing argument made by
| alien conservationists or future intelligent time-traveling
| beings that would arise on Earth after us.)
| VBprogrammer wrote:
| You didn't mention:
|
| 3. Restoring species of commercial importance.
|
| In reality that probably the number 1 reason, as
| unfortunate as that might be.
| titzer wrote:
| This is like focusing on preserving skin on the portions of
| your body not already covered by clothes, and fuck the
| rest.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| No, it's like ignoring aestheics of hair and fingernails
| when rest of the body is in danger.
| titzer wrote:
| What if we screwed up the classification of fingernails
| versus internal organs and focused on the wrong things?
| The fact is that Earth is a huge, vastly interconnected
| ecosystem that is entering a long spiraling crash, due to
| us, and we aren't smart enough to figure out what is a
| support beam and what is a weathervane.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| If you go far enough into this "what if" thinking,
| suddenly it's not clear if the ecosystem is collapsing.
| After all, how would we know? Maybe we screwed up the
| classification?
|
| I propose that perhaps we do know enough, and the problem
| is that at social / economic level, we fail to prioritize
| what needs to be done.
| jl6 wrote:
| I don't think there's a simple way of distinguishing your
| two categories. "Complex interactions and feedback loops"
| covers a lot of territory.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| > Isn't that part of the concern about climate change -
| wildlife and ecosystem conservation?
|
| It is, but more from the point of view of the idea that the
| climate changing will affect things everywhere, and we should
| prevent that, rather than every action we take should improve
| the lot of a local habitat.
| socialismisok wrote:
| Climate change applies negative pressure to keystone species
| like salmon. As their numbers dwindle we see die offs of other
| species of plants and animals.
|
| Ecosystem maintenance is part of Earth's homeostasis, and
| restoring salmon can have major positive environmental effects
| (increased nutrients upstream, increased food stocks in the
| ocean, more really available salmon for fishing, etc.)
|
| Dams like this produce little energy, require dredging and
| maintenance, pose safety risks if they aren't well maintained.
| IfOnlyYouKnew wrote:
| Decisions involve trade-offs. Pretending that they weren't
| considered without any attempt to inform oneself on the
| question is just useless cynicism.
| bilsbie wrote:
| You must be new here.
| HPsquared wrote:
| "So long and thanks" -from all the fish
| pvaldes wrote:
| You need to see the whole picture
|
| To survive as society, we need lots of trees growing as fast as
| possible to fixate CO2 from the air and clean our mess. Ok?
|
| Trees need nitrogen to grow, but this conifer forests lack
| typically nitrogen so the tree's grow is stunted.
|
| In fact this ecosystems work because there is a major and main
| external source of nitrogen: The Sea
|
| And more precisely, Salmon migration
|
| The majority of the nitrogen stored in this wild areas came
| from the salmons. How do we know it? Ecology research.
|
| So, protecting salmon (= removing CO2 from the air) is suddenly
| a very important issue for us and definitely not a caprice, or
| something to joke about it.
| concordDance wrote:
| > To survive as society, we need lots of trees growing as
| fast as possible to fixate CO2 from the air and clean our
| mess.
|
| Unless you're going to then burry all the wood that won't
| come close to enough. The mass of carbon in oil and in the
| air is far too much to make up with tree planting.
|
| Also, society can definitely survive a couple of degrees of
| heating. Though it might not be that pleasant for many.
| pvaldes wrote:
| Do you mean buried, like the tree roots do? then half of
| this biomass is yet buried so we don't need to.
|
| "Some help" is better than "no help at all", and we need a
| lot of help currently so, what If --we try-- at least?. We
| could buy some very precious time. If all that we need is
| to eliminate some old dams, this is a solution that we can
| afford.
|
| > Society can definitely survive a couple of degrees of
| heating
|
| We will know the answer to this question in a few years.
| concordDance wrote:
| It's a matter of efficiency. What is the best use of man
| hours and land?
|
| I suspect planting trees will very rarely be the answer
| (judging by some back of the envelope calculations),
| while making low regulation nuclear power plants or
| researching energy storage mechanisms will often be.
| VBprogrammer wrote:
| It's not impossible that improving the ecology of a whole river
| system ends up reducing total emissions.
|
| In reality though I suspect that this dam is not economically
| viable to update all of the infrastructure.
| photochemsyn wrote:
| Anyone interested in dams in the American west should read
| Cadillac Desert by Marc Reisner (1986). This journal article
| (PNAS,USGS) supports most of the concepts introduced in Cadillac
| Desert:
|
| https://sci-hub.se/10.2307/25756872
|
| (2010) "Reclaiming freshwater sustainability in the Cadillac
| Desert" Sabo et al.
|
| Purely hydroelectic power dams are something of a special case of
| the overall dam programs, which were mostly geared towards
| providing water for large agribusiness concerns (especially high-
| value crops like fruits, nuts, alfalfa-dairy production, etc.)
| and for large desert cities (Las Vegas, Phoenix, etc.). The
| Colorado river is probably the main dam issue, as the ongoing
| fossil-fueled regional megadrought is pushing those dams towards
| 'dead pool' status, and there's a rising conflict between cities
| and agriculture over who will get the water. Recycling water is
| likely going to be necessary, aka 'toilet-to-tap'.
|
| Here's the FERC decision on the Klamath. The history of the
| licensing of these dams goes back to the 1950s:
|
| > "The original license order [1954] was for the construction and
| operation of the Big Bend No. 2 development, also known as the
| J.C. Boyle development. Later orders incorporated the other
| project developments into the license... The original license,
| issued to the California Oregon Power Company, was transferred to
| Pacific Power and Light Company on June 16, 1961 and then to
| PacifiCorp on November 23, 1988."
|
| https://www.ferc.gov/media/h-1-p-2082-063
|
| One takeaway is that investor-owned electric utilities have
| always been nothing but government-subsidized theft from
| electricity consumers; they're essentially natural monopolies and
| would be better as state-owned entities (see for example police
| and fire departments, which are not investor-owned nor subject to
| rent extractions by billionaires like Buffet and the B-H
| shareholders).
| icytrumpet wrote:
| I'd also recommend The Dreamt Land: Chasing Water and Dust
| Across California by Mark Arax.
| drc37 wrote:
| Destroying dams when they are in a drought. In Idaho, dams are
| our life blood. No dams, no food or people in most of southern
| Idaho.
| gee_totes wrote:
| What if those dams contributed to the drought?
| throwayyy479087 wrote:
| If you can't live somewhere without significant terraforming,
| you shouldn't be living there. There are unbelievably huge
| swaths of the country with abundant water and existing
| infrastructure - look at Buffalo, Pittsburgh etc. Go live there
| and leave the West alone.
| throwaway71271 wrote:
| George Carlin - Saving the Planet:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7W33HRc1A6c
| thedays wrote:
| dang - this article on this same decision seems more informative
| and substantive and is also not paywalled.
| https://www.opb.org/article/2022/11/18/klamath-river-dam-rem...
| ROTMetro wrote:
| As someone whose lake was reclassified as man made after we were
| promised that wouldn't happen if a dam was built (because our
| lake exists with or without their damn dam), whose lake ecosystem
| has been wrecked by the damn management to keep downward water
| commitments even though we were promised that wouldn't happen,
| and to top it off, our water rights stolen so that the Feds could
| allocate it to other visible 'prestige' and/or court ordered
| commitments that supersede our water rights and local ecosystem,
| I have zero trust in Pacific Northwest watershed management.
|
| They may have their 'prestige' projects like this to show the
| good they are doing, but the damage they are doing to less
| visible water sheds and their failures to keep to their previous
| commitments is just more of the same. And again a lot of this
| isn't about science but about lost court cases to restore certain
| 'winning' watersheds, meaning this isn't being done in the best
| manner just in the matter to meet the first winners to get to
| court. What happens when we all go to court and they can't just
| reallocate everything to their 'prestige' and first to court
| judgement projects?
| gamblor956 wrote:
| "our water rights stolen" vs "supersede our water rights"...
|
| Your water rights weren't stolen. They were subordinate to
| other water rightsholders, meaning that they have first dibs on
| the water.
|
| And this project wasn't about a court case...It seems that your
| projecting a bit from your own failed court case?
| grammers wrote:
| That's interesting. It shows the struggle of sustainable
| solutions: Water power vs fish population; wind power vs bird
| population. Such arguments, however, are distorted by lobbyists
| of coal, oil and gas. After all, no one is asking how many fish
| or birds are killed by coal, oil or gas - and it's certainly a
| lot.
|
| Essentially, water and wind power production must be preferred,
| but unfortunately it's not always the case. While it might make
| sense in this concrete example to tear down the old damn, there
| are so many other renewable projects that fail because of this
| discussion...
| dementis wrote:
| 2020 article about this dam removal project makes it sound more
| like a financial burden removal rather than restoring salmon
| habitat. The environmental impact is just the emotional baggage
| being used to get the voters to foot the bill for the project.
|
| https://apnews.com/article/dams-fish-salmon-oregon-environme...
|
| "The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission must approve the deal.
| If accepted, it would allow PacifiCorp and Berkshire Hathaway to
| walk away from aging dams that are more of an albatross than a
| profit-generator, while addressing regulators' concerns."
| compiler-guy wrote:
| The state has a broad interest in fixing the environmental
| effects. The owners have a financial interest in avoiding
| maintenance. So it's both.
| hellotomyrars wrote:
| The calculus doesn't stop at the maintenance costs, though I
| agree that altruism isn't the goal. Salmon are big business.
| The positive effects of helping build the population has a
| (pardon the pun) downstream benefit, economically.
|
| I don't think people who are familiar with the PNW have an
| understanding on how these issues have real impact day to day.
| The fishing has gotten worse and the attempts to help the
| salmon populations, like salmon ladders, is a tiny boost, if at
| all. And everything has a cost, including all of that
| infrastructure.
|
| Put simply: The dams cost too much, provide too little, and the
| fish are more valuable.
|
| This is a slam dunk no-brainer for everyone involved.
|
| If they generated a meaningful amount of power things would be
| different, but they're not even a drop in the bucket at this
| point.
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