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Tearing down Klamath dams: The largest dam demolition
- Arrath 3y agoI 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-blasts-to-help-lake-fish/ https://www.spokesman.com/stories/2007/oct/30/levees-face-bl... [1] https://www.americanrivers.org/2023/08/sedimentation-and-dam-removal-bringing-a-river-back-to-life/#:~:text=Another%20high%2Dprofile%20dam%20removal,clay%2C%20and%20very%20fine%20sand https://www.americanrivers.org/2023/08/sedimentation-and-dam....
- genter 3y agoThey're removing the bigger dams in the winter so there's more water to flush the sediment down stream.
- bradford 3y agoIt took years for the silt/sediment to settle during the Elwha dam removal! Now that it's complete, there's an entirely new shoreline. It's been great to see.
- Arrath 3y agoOh I know, I was part of the crew that blasted the oversized boulders in the river channel just below the dam to open the channel up wider. It was really very cool to watch! I need to go back and see it again, its been years.
- xnx 3y ago"Klamath" on a tech news site still triggers Pentium II memories for me: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentium_II https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentium_II
- calt 3y agoI 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 3y agoUsing 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 3y agoThat was probably the most use "Ulaanbaatar" got that year. Mongolians usually shorten the capital to the initialism UB/Уб in speech and text because it's such a long word.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- sib 3y agoAs I recall, they got sued by the musician's estate for using the code name, "Hendrix," so legal declared that they would henceforth only use place names as codenames to avoid the risk.
- RandallBrown 3y agoIf 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.
- doitLP 3y agoHere’s a good one: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Q3ooEH3cGHs https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Q3ooEH3cGHs
- civilitty 3y agoWell, that's terrifying: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mQusj6tD97w 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 3y agoI 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 3y agoAs I recall, the barge had very limited motive power and was instead anchored to multiple points, positioning itself by using winches on those lines.
- gibspaulding 3y ago> It's also kind of amazing that the dam was essentially destroyed with a single guy and a single (large) jack hammer. I was thinking the same thing. I know that being a heavy equipment operator is probably mind numbingly boring a lot of the time, but this particular job looks like it would have been incredibly satisfying.
- pengaru 3y agoDerrick 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 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hOOuGb_E86Q
- Gibbon1 3y agoA 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.
- poulsbohemian 3y agoYou 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 3y agoWith 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-hydropower-or-water-climate/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2022/04/30/us/west-drought-lake-powell-h...
- Arrath 3y agoYeah, 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.
- jeffbee 3y agoThey 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.
- poulsbohemian 3y agoI 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.
- robobro 3y agoSo 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...
- mulmen 3y agoI 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.
- mordae 3y agoWere there any dams in Fallout 2?
- clarionbell 3y agoI don't think so. I know that in New Vegas they talked about NCR drying up most of the reservoirs to help ranchers.
- zwieback 3y agoNot 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.
- declan_roberts 3y agoDams 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 3y agoI think we do for the big ones on the Columbia, etc. The small ones that are aging anyway get torn out.
- twothamendment 3y agoI'm in Montana and the river here during the spawn looks red with salmon. I don't know how many ladders they climbed, but it seems like they can work. These fish would have to have come up the Columbia river. Somewhere up the thread, a 3% success rate was thrown out, so maybe some designs are better than others.
- kortilla 3y agoWhere in Montana? Salmon generally don’t make it up the Colombia through ID into the Clark fork: https://www.mtpr.org/2022-09-28/why-arent-there-salmon-in-the-clark-fork-river https://www.mtpr.org/2022-09-28/why-arent-there-salmon-in-th... East of the divide is the Mississippi basin so that’s a whole different story.
- twothamendment 3y agoThe NW corner, but not part of the Clark Fork drainage. It is a sneaky little corner that refuses to flow with the rest of the state. Salmon snagging is a thing for us and the bears.
- kortilla 3y agoIf you’re referring to the Kokanee from Kootenay, they are a land-locked sockeye. I don’t think any ocean-goers make it to Libby.
- rewsiffer 3y agoIf you are looking for a really good book about the history of water in America(especially dams), check out "Cadillac Desert" by Marc Reisner.
- mikhailfranco 3y agoChina is replacing some of its older dams. Many were hastily built during The Great Leap Forward, with more emphasis on rapid completion than quality and safety. There were dam failures, some with huge loss of life. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1975_Banqiao_Dam_failure https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1975_Banqiao_Dam_failure A new dam is built alongside, then the old one dismantled. For example, the Fengman Dam on the Songhua in N.E. China was originally built during the Japanese occupation of Manchuria: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fengman_Dam#New_Dam https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fengman_Dam#New_Dam http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/2018-12/12/c_137668907.htm http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/2018-12/12/c_137668907.htm