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As an environmentalist myself, the destruction of hydro-electric dams is low-IQ environmentalism. Hydro is green, renewable energy with solid baseline capacity

As an environmentalist myself, the destruction of hydro-electric dams is low-IQ environmentalism. Hydro is green, renewable energy with solid baseline capacity. The environmental benefits of a lake/reservoir far exceed the benefits of a river. The “environment” is more than just the unidimensional needs of a single species (salmon), and the ignorance on display every time hydro comes up in the “environmentalist community” would be astounding if it wasn’t so routine. Not that it matters, because every dam we tear down will accelerate the carbonization of the atmosphere and acidification of the oceans your precious salmon need to live in anyways. It’s hard to not be conspiratorial when clean, reliable energy like nuclear and hydro are demonized. Especially with ridiculous headlines like “restoring a tribe’s way of life”. Like really, how will their “way of life” be restored when the carbon-triggered methane runaway happens and turns the entire region into a desert? Will this particular dam alone lead to this outcome? No. But decades of inmates running the asylum certainly will.

mjhay 3y ago
The power output of dams like these is negligible. The Grand Coulee Dam they are not. Besides, they were reaching EOL. It would be homicidally negligent to leave such aging dams in a very earthquake-prone area.
SV_BubbleTime 3y ago
Hydrodams ruin rivers. From the removal of sand, algea, fish, etc. If you were an environmentalist talking about low-IQ issues you would be better off complaining that nuclear was ruined by misguided environmentalists and extreme-regulation.
- local_crmdgeon 3y ago
  Agreed- the anti-nuclear and anti-density environmentalists are basically fossil fuel maximalists. This is a great project though
bumby 3y ago
The dam is at the end of its useful life. The real reason of it being torn down is that it is more cost effective than refurbishing it.
- cogman10 3y ago
  This is probably the most depressing part about hydro. A lot of it is old and the environmental damage is done. So now everywhere in the US is being faced with either expensive refurbishments, loss of generation capacity, or the potential for yet another "this dam broke down and flooded a city" story. I'm not really for adding new hydro, but removing old hydro feels like such a waste.
  - bumby 3y ago
    The US is addicted to kicking the can down the road in terms of deferred maintenance on so much infrastructure.
ip26 3y ago
The damn that was removed generated 27MW. California has nearly 40,000MW of solar power. Los Angeles alone has 650MW of solar.
- idiotsecant 3y ago
  How many MW did those panels make at night when the river was still flowing? It's silly to simply compare nominal power outputs. Different generation sources have different characteristics. If you support removing hydro you better support constructing battery storage with you wallet because just adding more solar panels does not fill the same niche
  - OJFord 3y ago
    If GP's numbers are correct I don't think I even need a napkin to say solar + battery is more cost effective.
    - idiotsecant 3y ago
      If this was true we wouldn't have any dams, the market would see to it pretty quickly. It's not, at least not yet.
      - OJFord 3y ago
        We wouldn't have any new dams, or do significant work on them, maybe. However there's one approved for Scotland (Coire Glas) to do 30GWh of storage, generating 1.5GW. UK wide total storage capacity currently 24GWh apparently, so it absolutely competes. Maybe this one just wasn't cost effective to modernise/repair, the geography would never allow much, or cheaper to start from scratch, or something.
  - ceejayoz 3y ago
    > How many MW did those panels make at night when the river was still flowing? Probably similar to the dam’s output during some of California’s multi-year severe drought. Hydro can be variable too.
pengaru 3y ago
> As an environmentalist myself, the destruction of hydro-electric dams is low-IQ environmentalism. Are modern environmental standards the result of low-IQ environmentalism? Because TFA buried the lede, and you, the self-proclaimed environmentalist are attacking "low-IQ environmentalism" for what's ultimately just a pragmatic business decision: > The Portland-based utility - part of billionaire Warren Buffett’s > conglomerate Berkshire Hathaway - agreed to remove the aging dams after > determining it would be less expensive than trying to bring them up to > current environmental standards. It just so happens the tribes are celebrating the removal and restoration of their traditional way of living, so I guess we should blame them for it.
datatrashfire 3y ago
Wild Salmon populations in the Pacific Northwest are on track for extinction, in no small part due to the loss of habitat from dams.
- cronix 3y ago
  Also due to chemicals in car tires which eventually washes off the roads and into streams, rivers, oceans. https://www.washington.edu/news/2020/12/03/tire-related-chemical-largely-responsible-for-adult-coho-salmon-deaths-in-urban-streams/ https://www.washington.edu/news/2020/12/03/tire-related-chem...
_dain_ 3y ago
>Hydro is green, renewable energy with solid baseline capacity. It's also the most dangerous, by an absurd margin. Dam collapses have killed more people than every other power generation source combined. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1975_Banqiao_Dam_failure https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1975_Banqiao_Dam_failure Chernobyl was peanuts compared to this.
- bumby 3y ago
  It’s important to understand that dams also provide other aspects besides power generation. Many areas rely on them for flood plain management, irrigation etc. so it may be disingenuous to consider all of the negatives as a consequence of hydro power (meaning its not a great comparison)
dkural 3y ago
No one is demonizing hydro here. You don't know what you're talking about. The environmental benefits of dam removal far exceed the hydro generation capacity in all the cases where people actually decided to remove a dam. Most removed dams don't generate hydro anymore, and some never did. They were remnants one wants to deal with the expense of removing.
sinkasapa 3y ago
I don't feel like it is unintelligent ("low-IQ") to believe that there are meaningful environmental impacts to hydro-electric dams. Recognizing that hydro-electric may cause more harm than good in some cases seems like a position that is based on evidence. Below I linked to an article. It may not be the very best article but it is one that someone can find with just a brief internet search of "environmental impacts of hydroelectric dams". It cites reliable sources and carefully performed studies. It discusses attempts to measure the costs and benefits of building hydro-electric infrastructure: https://www.nature.com/articles/s44221-022-00018-9 https://www.nature.com/articles/s44221-022-00018-9 That article is not at all against hydro-electric but it does present the idea that a hydro-electric strategy should be informed by a variety of factors and may not always be a good choice. If it is not always a good choice to build a dam, it seems very reasonable to suspect that it may not have always been a good choice in the past, either. > The environmental benefits of a lake/reservoir far exceed the benefits of a river. I don't understand why, if preserving species diversity, for instance, is one goal of environmental policy, how one could simply say that one type of habitat is strictly better than another. That seems to be contrary to everything I've ever heard about sustainable ecosystems and species diversity. I'm not an expert. I'm not an activist, myself, but I'm very close to indigenous and environmental activists who are concerned about the impacts of dams in the Western Amazonian region. Salmon are never considered all that relevant there. Why do you think that all environmentalists who fight dams only care about salmon?

mjhay 3y ago

The power output of dams like these is negligible. The Grand Coulee Dam they are not. Besides, they were reaching EOL. It would be homicidally negligent to leave such aging dams in a very earthquake-prone area.

SV_BubbleTime 3y ago

Hydrodams ruin rivers. From the removal of sand, algea, fish, etc. If you were an environmentalist talking about low-IQ issues you would be better off complaining that nuclear was ruined by misguided environmentalists and extreme-regulation.

local_crmdgeon 3y ago
Agreed- the anti-nuclear and anti-density environmentalists are basically fossil fuel maximalists. This is a great project though

bumby 3y ago

The dam is at the end of its useful life. The real reason of it being torn down is that it is more cost effective than refurbishing it.

cogman10 3y ago
This is probably the most depressing part about hydro. A lot of it is old and the environmental damage is done. So now everywhere in the US is being faced with either expensive refurbishments, loss of generation capacity, or the potential for yet another "this dam broke down and flooded a city" story. I'm not really for adding new hydro, but removing old hydro feels like such a waste.
- bumby 3y ago
  The US is addicted to kicking the can down the road in terms of deferred maintenance on so much infrastructure.

ip26 3y ago

The damn that was removed generated 27MW. California has nearly 40,000MW of solar power. Los Angeles alone has 650MW of solar.

idiotsecant 3y ago
How many MW did those panels make at night when the river was still flowing? It's silly to simply compare nominal power outputs. Different generation sources have different characteristics. If you support removing hydro you better support constructing battery storage with you wallet because just adding more solar panels does not fill the same niche
- OJFord 3y ago
  If GP's numbers are correct I don't think I even need a napkin to say solar + battery is more cost effective.
  - idiotsecant 3y ago
    If this was true we wouldn't have any dams, the market would see to it pretty quickly. It's not, at least not yet.
    - OJFord 3y ago
      We wouldn't have any new dams, or do significant work on them, maybe. However there's one approved for Scotland (Coire Glas) to do 30GWh of storage, generating 1.5GW. UK wide total storage capacity currently 24GWh apparently, so it absolutely competes. Maybe this one just wasn't cost effective to modernise/repair, the geography would never allow much, or cheaper to start from scratch, or something.
- ceejayoz 3y ago
  > How many MW did those panels make at night when the river was still flowing? Probably similar to the dam’s output during some of California’s multi-year severe drought. Hydro can be variable too.

pengaru 3y ago

> As an environmentalist myself, the destruction of hydro-electric dams is low-IQ environmentalism. Are modern environmental standards the result of low-IQ environmentalism? Because TFA buried the lede, and you, the self-proclaimed environmentalist are attacking "low-IQ environmentalism" for what's ultimately just a pragmatic business decision: > The Portland-based utility - part of billionaire Warren Buffett’s > conglomerate Berkshire Hathaway - agreed to remove the aging dams after > determining it would be less expensive than trying to bring them up to > current environmental standards. It just so happens the tribes are celebrating the removal and restoration of their traditional way of living, so I guess we should blame them for it.

datatrashfire 3y ago

Wild Salmon populations in the Pacific Northwest are on track for extinction, in no small part due to the loss of habitat from dams.

cronix 3y ago
Also due to chemicals in car tires which eventually washes off the roads and into streams, rivers, oceans. https://www.washington.edu/news/2020/12/03/tire-related-chemical-largely-responsible-for-adult-coho-salmon-deaths-in-urban-streams/ https://www.washington.edu/news/2020/12/03/tire-related-chem...

_dain_ 3y ago

>Hydro is green, renewable energy with solid baseline capacity. It's also the most dangerous, by an absurd margin. Dam collapses have killed more people than every other power generation source combined. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1975_Banqiao_Dam_failure https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1975_Banqiao_Dam_failure Chernobyl was peanuts compared to this.

bumby 3y ago
It’s important to understand that dams also provide other aspects besides power generation. Many areas rely on them for flood plain management, irrigation etc. so it may be disingenuous to consider all of the negatives as a consequence of hydro power (meaning its not a great comparison)

dkural 3y ago

No one is demonizing hydro here. You don't know what you're talking about. The environmental benefits of dam removal far exceed the hydro generation capacity in all the cases where people actually decided to remove a dam. Most removed dams don't generate hydro anymore, and some never did. They were remnants one wants to deal with the expense of removing.

sinkasapa 3y ago

I don't feel like it is unintelligent ("low-IQ") to believe that there are meaningful environmental impacts to hydro-electric dams. Recognizing that hydro-electric may cause more harm than good in some cases seems like a position that is based on evidence. Below I linked to an article. It may not be the very best article but it is one that someone can find with just a brief internet search of "environmental impacts of hydroelectric dams". It cites reliable sources and carefully performed studies. It discusses attempts to measure the costs and benefits of building hydro-electric infrastructure: https://www.nature.com/articles/s44221-022-00018-9 https://www.nature.com/articles/s44221-022-00018-9 That article is not at all against hydro-electric but it does present the idea that a hydro-electric strategy should be informed by a variety of factors and may not always be a good choice. If it is not always a good choice to build a dam, it seems very reasonable to suspect that it may not have always been a good choice in the past, either. > The environmental benefits of a lake/reservoir far exceed the benefits of a river. I don't understand why, if preserving species diversity, for instance, is one goal of environmental policy, how one could simply say that one type of habitat is strictly better than another. That seems to be contrary to everything I've ever heard about sustainable ecosystems and species diversity. I'm not an expert. I'm not an activist, myself, but I'm very close to indigenous and environmental activists who are concerned about the impacts of dams in the Western Amazonian region. Salmon are never considered all that relevant there. Why do you think that all environmentalists who fight dams only care about salmon?