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In addition, many smaller dams in New England were built to power mills, which are no longer operational. Despite no longer being needed and crumbling, the dams

• OldHand2018 6y ago
  > the dams can't be removed until environmental impact studies can be completed, because we now require those. Yes, as they should. The issue is not doing environmental impact studies, but how long they take, how expensive they are, and how opaque the process is. The assumptions, methods and data should be as public as possible so objections can be made and dealt with logically. As an example, my parents live in a relatively conservative location and the public utility decided that they were going to replace all their coal power plants with wind power. There was a huge uproar and their response was “here is our model and our data, please find plausible scenarios where wind power isn’t cheaper than coal.” The opposition died away because it was obvious that the switch was the best move.
  • nickff 6y ago
    The reason the environmental impact studies are kept opaque is because it's a terrible rent-seeking industry that thrives on cut & paste reports. The people doing the reports are very happy as things are, and don't want 'improvement'.
    • OldHand2018 6y ago
      That’s so incredibly believable, it’s sad.
      • deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]