[HN Gopher] Tearing down Klamath dams: The largest dam demolition
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Tearing down Klamath dams: The largest dam demolition
Author : genter
Score : 65 points
Date : 2023-08-31 15:29 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (calmatters.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (calmatters.org)
| xnx wrote:
| "Klamath" on a tech news site still triggers Pentium II memories
| for me: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentium_II
| calt wrote:
| I wasn't aware of Intel's practice of using their home state's
| natural places for code names. I shouldn't be surprised that
| Apple wasn't first the that game.
| RajT88 wrote:
| Using place names is very common.
|
| A place I used to work had the internal name of a release
| called Ulaanbaatar. AFAIK, nobody on the dev team was from
| Mongolia, but this sort of thing was the norm.
|
| Recent OSX releases are all various places (High Sierra, Big
| Sur, Mojave, etc.)
|
| Azure regional codenames are "Black Forest" and "Fairfax" for
| Germany and USGov sovereign clouds.
|
| ...and so on.
| AlotOfReading wrote:
| That was probably the most use "Ulaanbaatar" got that year.
| Mongolians usually shorten the capital to the initialism
| UB/Ub in speech and text because it's such a long word.
| rewsiffer wrote:
| If you are looking for a really good book about the history of
| water in America(especially dams), check out "Cadillac Desert" by
| Marc Reisner.
| pengaru wrote:
| Derrick Jensen must be pleased to see these finally coming down.
|
| I only know about this issue at all because someone linked me his
| talks on youtube years ago.
|
| e.g. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hOOuGb_E86Q
| declan_roberts wrote:
| Dams have such immense economic and agricultural usage. Why
| aren't we investing as much money as it takes to save the salmon
| but keep the dam?
|
| The PNW has something like 80% of its power coming from clean
| hydro. It'd be a shame to lose that.
| zwieback wrote:
| I think we do for the big ones on the Columbia, etc. The small
| ones that are aging anyway get torn out.
| czinck wrote:
| As zwieback said, a lot of the dams just aren't that useful,
| for a bunch of reasons but biggest is that they're just too
| small. On top of that, at least for the Washington dams I'm
| more familiar with, the power generation doesn't match up with
| need. Most of the river flow is over the winter and spring
| (that's when it rains/snows and then more rain and melting
| snow) and in the late summer when electricity use is highest
| the dams don't have enough water flow to be really productive.
| Worse yet, some of the oldest dams are even more limited
| because there's too much mud in their reservoirs.
|
| Nothing insurmountable (dredge the silt, build them bigger so
| the reservoir lasts until the fall, etc), but it just means the
| most cost effective way to help the salmon is tear down a lot
| of these dams.
| poulsbohemian wrote:
| I took a tour with the Corps of Engineers earlier this week at a
| dam on the Snake River. Apparently it isn'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.
|
| 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's easy to assume that the pro-dam crowd
| is anti-environment, which couldn't be farther from the truth.
|
| 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't really
| there yet. Given the net benefit and the massive costs of
| replacement, it'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.
|
| Something I haven'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 / Oregon wheat goes down the river on
| barges that would otherwise be tractor trailers on the highways.
| Lots of problems to solve.
| DeRock wrote:
| > Something I haven'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?
|
| There are some companies doing small scale hydro, by taking
| advantage of the natural flow of a river, without the use of
| any dam/head. Eg. see https://emrgy.com, and a volts podcast
| with the founder/CEO: https://www.volts.wtf/p/how-to-make-
| small-hydro-more-like#de...
| WJW wrote:
| > these various wave generators we see in discussion for off-
| shore use
|
| When it comes to wave power, "in discussion" is the operative
| word. Modern pelton wheels are 95%+ effective in converting
| kinetic energy into mechanical energy and have been in
| operation for decades. They are super well understood and
| optimized and are deployed at scales of dozens of megawatts
| per unit. Total installed capacity is probably into the
| hundreds of gigawatts.
|
| AFAIK, no wave power project is above 10 MW as of now and the
| total installed base is still tiny despite decades of
| research. Look at
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wave_power_stations for
| example. It is a combination of the ocean being a super
| unfriendly environment for technology in combination with all
| of the wave energy extraction technologies being extremely
| inefficient.
| poulsbohemian wrote:
| Yeah, my gut tells me when we get to a point where we have to
| either rebuild or remove a lot of these dams, we'll pursue
| technology like this as a happy path. Or at least that should
| be part of the options.
| bozhark wrote:
| What's the output of such device?
| TkTech wrote:
| 10kW to 40kW according to their spec sheet[1], so seems
| irrelevant as an alternative. A single one of the older
| dams getting replaced, the Iron Gate Dam, has a capacity of
| 18MW. One powers a single small farm, the other powers
| entire towns, heavy industry, foundries...
|
| And to be clear, these are small, old, dams. Modern dams
| and turbines produce far, far more.
|
| [1]: https://emrgy.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/Emrgy-
| Specifica...
| timerol wrote:
| These turbines are meant to be used in a fleet, along a
| river. They take about 16 feet across per pair, so call
| it 20 across the normal flow of the river. They also do
| not block the flow, so more can be installed a little
| downstream, depending on the pitch of the riverbed.
| Assuming 5 groups per mile, 10 miles of flow of the
| Klamath River will give you the capacity to install 1000
| of these, for a total capacity of 10 MW to 40 MW.
|
| Saying that these are too small is like saying that solar
| panels are too small. The module size has nothing to do
| with the total generation - they're built to be
| manufactured and placed in bulk.
|
| Source: I listened to the referenced podcast episode when
| I came out, and just looked at the spec sheet to refresh
| my memory.
| TkTech wrote:
| These absolutely cannot be used in these kinds of rivers.
| Even their own promos only show irrigation channels.
| These things will chop salmon like sushi and running
| miles of infrastructure for them up and down a river is
| fantasy.
|
| Solar is far more practical and far more dense then these
| things to replace a hydro dam.
| AlbertCory wrote:
| The rosy scenario, then, is lots of these little
| turbines?
|
| Won't there be separate NIMBY lawsuits about every single
| one of these, claims that they're unstudied and cause
| ecological damage, ruin the natural enjoyment of the
| river, etc. etc.?
| justsomehnguy wrote:
| In the rivers with minimal debris, with long enough
| stretches to place them all, with enough infra (read:
| cabling) to supply\gather electricity from them all to
| the one/two/three substation... All these while providing
| an efficient way to grind all the fishes.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| Small scale hydro is pretty old. 15-20 years ago I stayed in
| a small inn/hotel in China in a national park on a huge
| mountain that got its power via a water wheel on a stream fed
| by melting glaciers. It was fragile, so occasionally it get
| pushed off, causing power to go out while the hotel staff
| repositioned it.
| freedomben wrote:
| I tend to agree. I consider myself an environmentalist, and
| I'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'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.
| dghlsakjg wrote:
| The flip side of this is easily illustrated:
|
| Look up the North Atlantic Cod Fishery. We failed to tell
| fishermen to stop fishing, and as a result the entire
| ecosystem collapsed and has never returned. They had to stop
| fishing anyway, and their way of life collapsed too.
|
| Its a tricky reality to balance, but the fishing industry
| have historically always gotten this wrong. At a certain
| point you have to be willing to tell people that their way of
| life is unsustainable.
|
| Of course, then we have to recognize that most of us live an
| unsustainable way of life, fishermen just happen to be living
| unsustainably in a shorter term than the rest of us.
| freedomben wrote:
| Absolutely, completely agree. The fishing industry has
| demonstrated extensively that they can't be trusted to
| self-manage (North Atlantic Cod, and Pacific Salmon are
| great examples). The appeal of over-fishing for short term
| gains at the cost of long-term is just too good for them to
| refuse, and they will take what they can. Normalcy bias[1]
| (which they come by honestly as humans) will do it's thing
| and convince them that a little bit won't hurt, or it will
| never disappear, or whatever it needs to. Whatever the
| solution is, it will definitely include reductions in
| fishing allowances, and that's going to hurt for producers
| and consumers alike, but it still has to be done. If we
| don't, in 5 to 10 years they'll be changing jobs anyway
| cause the fish will be gone and the ecosystem devastated.
|
| The trick isn't to avoid all suffering, that's just not
| possible. The trick is (IMHO) to first understand it, then
| minimize it. Homer Alaska guy will have to accept reduced
| income for at least a few years until the population
| rebounds. In the end, at least his business, home, and way
| of life aren't completely destroyed.
|
| I don't know how we establish/create an independent and
| reasonable regulator to manage limits, but that's what we
| need to figure out. The existing entities are too corrupt
| and have proven that they can't be trusted. On the flip
| side, some environmental groups are too extreme and also
| not trustworthy regulators. It's a very hard and complex
| problem.
|
| [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normalcy_bias
| poulsbohemian wrote:
| I may regret making this comparison, but bear with me here...
| the thinking person realizes that the terms "pro-life" and
| "pro-choice" are in no way an accurate reflection of two
| camps on that issue. In the same way, what's clear to me is
| that dams are not anti-salmon, despite the common political
| portrayal that dams == dead salmon, no dams == return of the
| salmon. Could the fish (not just salmon, but also lampreys,
| sturgeon, trout, etc...) do better without dams? Sure,
| possibly, but let's not overlook that these dams also employ
| technology to _cool the water_ to counter climate effects.
| And, the rate of fish through the dams is pretty darn amazing
| -- 95+% will survive their up /down journey. So I'm with you
| - we all have to study and look at the big picture and try to
| reign in the various political forces that may not be acting
| with cool heads (on all sides of the equation).
| deepfriedchokes wrote:
| Jobs should not come before the environment. Humans can
| easily adapt. The environment less so.
| WJW wrote:
| You say "humans can easily adapt", but some of these
| families have been in the fishery trade for generations and
| would rather give up their religion than being forced to
| live on land like a normie. This is absolutely not
| something they will willingly do.
|
| If you've ever tried telling an Evangelical that taking
| this whole Jesus thing so seriously is maybe not the best
| idea for humanity then you know what I mean.
| robobro wrote:
| So do you think the anti-dam crowd is anti-environment?
|
| No one wants to be labeled as anti-environment, but when
| assigning labels, I think it helps to look at the big picture.
| I think the anti-nuclear crowd happens to be anti-environment
| in practice, even if many of them are tree hugging, organic
| eating, blah blah blah...
| freedomben wrote:
| Why do you need to assign an "anti-environment" label to
| anybody? It conveys very little useful meaning, and virtually
| nobody is going to assign that label to themselves so you
| immediately break down communication and polarize and you end
| up getting nowhere.
| pfdietz wrote:
| The anti-nuclear movement maybe was anti-environment, in the
| sense that avoiding nuclear led to higher CO2 emissions, but
| I don't think that's true now for new nuclear construction.
| Retric wrote:
| Being anti dam/nuclear/whatever doesn't mean you have the
| same reasons as everyone else with that opinion. You can be
| anti dam because of safety concerns around failure of a
| specific dam. You can dislike nuclear because you dislike
| massive subsidies.
|
| It's important to address someone's actual concerns not
| simply whatever you feel is easiest to attack.
| mulmen wrote:
| I have never met someone who is anti-environment. That's an
| _active_ stance. Everyone values the natural environment
| differently but labeling someone as actively opposed to it
| betrays a deep misunderstanding of other views.
| poulsbohemian wrote:
| I dunno man, I've met some of these eastern washington
| landowners that have their heads pretty far up their own
| asses. At some point apathy and ignorance become malice.
| mulmen wrote:
| > At some point apathy and ignorance become malice.
|
| Malice requires intent. Apathy and ignorance do not.
|
| I see no constructive outcome of following this logically
| flawed line of thinking.
| groby_b wrote:
| We really don't need the energy - contributions from Klamath
| dams have been somewhat minuscule, at 163MW.
|
| As for "serious effort protecting wildlife with good outcomes",
| it's worth keeping in mind that the dams are directly
| responsible for excessive growth of cyanobacteria. Leading to a
| Klamath that's _seriously_ depleted. (No, the dams aren 't the
| only reason, but they are a large one). The net "benefit" of
| the dams staying around would be a significantly damaged
| ecosystem. And let's be clear, they _have_ reached the point
| where they are no longer viable, unless you externalize costs.
| PacifiCorp had the option to upgrade them to have less eco
| impact (salmon ladders etc), and they looked at the cost and
| said "nah, thanks, let's not".
|
| As for stakeholders coming together - that's kind of what
| happened here. It's not like this was an overnight decision.
| It's been almost two decades of work by folks involved. As
| always, in a multi-stakeholder environment, not everybody is
| happy. And nobody is 100% happy.
| margalabargala wrote:
| 163MW is 1% of all power generation in the state [0]
|
| That's not huge, but it's not nothing either. Feels like
| enough to not simply hand wave away, especially since that's
| carbon-free energy.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_power_stations_in_O
| reg...
| dzader wrote:
| [dead]
| groby_b wrote:
| Note that it's California & Oregon - and 163MW is 0.5% of
| CA's power generation, so probably around 0.3% across both
| states.
|
| Enough to give up on when it doesn't make commercial sense
| and destroys an ecosystem, the number doesn't stand in a
| vacuum.
| poulsbohemian wrote:
| Step back from the Klamath dams and read my comments as
| regarding the issue more broadly, as there are a lot more
| dams across the PNW being targeted for removal and/or that
| will reach functional obsolescence in upcoming decades. By
| everything I've read the Klamath dams were generally viewed
| by many parties as having reaching their natural end. Other
| dams with many decades to go are already being studied for
| removal (including the one I toured on the Snake), and that's
| where there's conflict.
| nonameiguess wrote:
| This was very much all stakeholders coming together. The power
| company and the tribe that is supposed to own the land and
| water rights had an agreement as far back as 2008, but it
| required Congressional approval, Congress never voted on it,
| then it was repackaged as only needing agency approval, and got
| that, but then Trump came in with the mandate to make sure
| nothing Obama could possibly get credit for actually happened,
| so it was reversed. If they didn't need to involve the federal
| government, this would have happened decades ago.
| Arrath wrote:
| I may be biased, having taken part in operations to restore some
| wetland along the Klamath in the past [0], but I quite look
| forward to seeing the river return, eventually, to a more natural
| state.
|
| I say eventually because there is undoubtedly a good amount of
| sediment trapped behind the dams that will need to flush through
| the river system.[1]
|
| [0] https://www.spokesman.com/stories/2007/oct/30/levees-face-
| bl...
|
| [1] https://www.americanrivers.org/2023/08/sedimentation-and-
| dam....
| genter wrote:
| They're removing the bigger dams in the winter so there's more
| water to flush the sediment down stream.
| RandallBrown wrote:
| If anyone is interested in seeing how a river returns after dams
| are removed look into the Upper Elwha and Glines Canyon dams in
| Washington. The changes in the last 10 years are pretty
| incredible.
|
| There are also cool videos of the dams actually being demolished.
| aendruk wrote:
| The changed river eventually washed out the road leading up to
| the dam: https://kvalhe.im/@andrew/107798167488087326
|
| You can still hike up to it and walk on top of the remaining
| dam structure, and since the washout the area has the feel of a
| ghost town.
| doitLP wrote:
| Here's a good one: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Q3ooEH3cGHs
| Arrath wrote:
| There's the White Salmon, too.
| civilitty wrote:
| Well, that's terrifying:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mQusj6tD97w
|
| It's basically just a floating barge with an excavator chipping
| away at the dam a little bit every day, while water rushes past
| it through the damage.
| whartung wrote:
| I guess the game is to simply not let the holes be big enough
| to lose the barge through, and the motive power to be able to
| pull away from the current of the water going over (either on
| the barge, or maybe there was a shore winch).
|
| It's also kind of amazing that the dam was essentially
| destroyed with a single guy and a single (large) jack hammer.
| Arrath wrote:
| As I recall, the barge had very limited motive power and
| was instead anchored to multiple points, positioning itself
| by using winches on those lines.
| zwieback wrote:
| Not to be confused with the dams of "The Klamath Project", which
| is upstream of these small hydroelectric dams, and is used for
| irrigation. Also very controversial and pitting fish and tribes
| against farmers.
| mordae wrote:
| Were there any dams in Fallout 2?
| Gibbon1 wrote:
| A interesting comparison is the first dam they are taking down
| produces about 112 million kwh of energy a year. Which is about
| the same as 50MW worth of solar. One gets the feeling these dam's
| wouldn't be worth building today.
| jeffbee wrote:
| They aren't worth keeping, either. The PG&E Feather River
| project for example can be replaced by a cheap mid-sized PV
| farm. Those run-of-the-river hydroelectric projects are way too
| dangerous to keep around which I think is best exemplified by
| the fact that the Feather River project started the largest
| wildfire in California history. So on the one hand you have the
| almost negligible benefit of an unreliable, seasonal power
| source and on the other hand you have the extirpation of salmon
| and a million acres of burnt forests. I known which one I
| prefer.
| Arrath wrote:
| Yeah, these dams are rather small in the absolute scale.
| Compared to one of the big guys like Grand Coulee with its
| production of 21 billion kwh/year, they're peanuts.
| poulsbohemian wrote:
| You are probably right, but maybe not quite for the reasons you
| imagine... many of the dams in the northwest run at only a tiny
| percentage of their possible output because increasing their
| productivity could have poor outcomes for fish, etc. So they
| have already ratcheted back much of their output as a
| compromise. But - we also have a lot of anti-solar, anti-wind
| people who try to block those projects for reasons I would call
| unscientific and emotional. So you can't outright replace the
| dams just yet either. The dams are also really good at
| providing a base load, as even when the wind doesn't blow that
| water just keeps moving.
| teachrdan wrote:
| With increasing drought and general weather variability, I
| wonder if they are still reliably provide a base load. For an
| extreme case, see Lake Powell drying up so much last year it
| generated little power:
| https://www.cnn.com/2022/04/30/us/west-drought-lake-
| powell-h...
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