12 ms·
Regulators OK largest dam demolition in history to restore salmon habitat
- throwaway71271 4y agoGeorge Carlin - Saving the Planet: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7W33HRc1A6c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7W33HRc1A6c
- rapsey 4y agoI 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.
- xroche 4y agoIt 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_ 4y agoBut 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_ 4y agoWould you mind explaining why nuclear is not ideal?
- rapsey 4y agoIt takes 10 years to build
- mschuster91 4y ago10 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...
- godshatter 4y agoThe best time to start building a nuclear power plant is 20 years ago; the second best time is today.
- mschuster91 4y agoNo. 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.
- Schroedingersat 4y agoNo, the best time is to spend the first mover costs on renewables in the 50s through 70s instead and then never build nuclear (or in the 1910s instead of spending them on coal and oil). The second best time is to build renewables now that those costs have been paid over the last 20 years.
- mjhay 4y agoThe long timelines and high costs of nuclear in the US have very little to do with the limits of the technology.
- justin66 4y ago> 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.
- snowwrestler 4y agoThe 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 4y agoWhat you described is capitalism as intended. Is this the reality or just a few big players and monopolies?
- dntrkv 4y agoYou 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 4y agoIt's small enough you can just buy them online: https://www.uspeglobal.com/listings?selected_categories%5B%5D=Diesel+Generators&selected_subcategories%5B%5D=10+-+99+MW https://www.uspeglobal.com/listings?selected_categories%5B%5...
- joe-collins 4y agoAs 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.
- yread 4y ago
- IfOnlyYouKnew 4y agoDecisions involve trade-offs. Pretending that they weren’t considered without any attempt to inform oneself on the question is just useless cynicism.
- bilsbie 4y agoYou must be new here.
- HPsquared 4y ago"So long and thanks" -from all the fish
- VBprogrammer 4y agoIt'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.
- cpursley 4y agoSo screw the wildlife? Isn't that part of the concern about climate change - wildlife and ecosystem conservation?
- TeMPOraL 4y agoWildlife 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.)
- dementis 4y ago2020 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-environment-71045373e7063bfff75fc43d15885639 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 4y agoThe state has a broad interest in fixing the environmental effects. The owners have a financial interest in avoiding maintenance. So it’s both.
- hellotomyrars 4y agoThe 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.
- Loic 4y agoAnswering 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.
- hannob 4y ago> 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.
- Gare 4y agoNot much more, I'd presume. Hydrology is the limiting factor.
- nopenopenopeno 4y agolike nuclear
- londons_explore 4y agoThey 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 4y agoI could be wrong but I don't think hydro has a low enough spin-up time to be useful as a peaker plant.
- bilsbie 4y agoHow will they control yearly flooding along this river?
- adql 4y agoBy increasing insurance rates
- Cthulhu_ 4y agoDo 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 4y agoThe best option is to make the flood plains unbuilt and let them flood.
- frosted-flakes 4y agoDams 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.
- mint2 4y agoThat 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
- steve_adams_86 4y agoI 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.
- bilsbie 4y agoThe 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?
- kibwen 4y agoPlenty of dams do have fish ladders, although Wikipedia suggests that they're not perfect: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fish_ladder#Effectiveness https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fish_ladder#Effectiveness
- wongarsu 4y agoThey 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.
- bombcar 4y agoYou 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.
- froj 4y agoThere'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/2021/10/06/4336893/211006_MM_Inbetriebnahme_Fischlift_Wasserkraftwerk_Muehleberg_DE.pdf https://www.bkw.ch/fileadmin/bt3_news/MyConvento/2021/10/06/...
- jasonwatkinspdx 4y agoMost 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.
- thedays 4y agodang - 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-removal-southern-oregon-dams-northern-california-drought/ https://www.opb.org/article/2022/11/18/klamath-river-dam-rem...
- svnt 4y agoThis 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-combined-river.html https://phys.org/news/2021-10-salmon-decline-impacted-combin... [1] https://e360.yale.edu/features/blocked_migration_fish_ladders_on_us_dams_are_not_effective https://e360.yale.edu/features/blocked_migration_fish_ladder... [2] https://www.fisheries.noaa.gov/west-coast/climate/river-temperatures-and-survival-endangered-california-winter-run-chinook-salmon https://www.fisheries.noaa.gov/west-coast/climate/river-temp... [3] https://wildsalmoncenter.org/salmon-a-keystone-species/ https://wildsalmoncenter.org/salmon-a-keystone-species/
- coryrc 4y agoThe dams have been there for decades, but only recently plummeted and no one can prove why? This doesn't inspire confidence.
- perrygeo 4y agoThe 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?
- drc37 4y agoDestroying 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 4y agoWhat if those dams contributed to the drought?
- throwayyy479087 4y agoIf 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.
- selimthegrim 4y agoAre you telling New Orleans to pack up and move?
- mjhay 4y agoNot a bad idea!
- throwayyy479087 4y agoAbsolutely yes. Also people who live on the bayous in Houston, and all of the population of Phoenix, Las Vegas, and Southern California. If you don't do it today, nature will force you to eventually. And when it does, you're going to have a very bad time.
- photochemsyn 4y agoAnyone 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 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 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 4y agoI'd also recommend The Dreamt Land: Chasing Water and Dust Across California by Mark Arax.
- grammers 4y agoThat'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...
- ROTMetro 4y agoAs 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?
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]