5 ms·

Then why couldn't they make that work for this damn? I'm assuming there must be other motivating factors for removing the damn.

by proee 2y ago

davidw 2y ago
Most of the Klamath dams were pretty old and not all that useful for other things like electricity generation or flood control, IIRC. I drove through Klamath Falls yesterday... that storm is sure going to give the river a lot of water to work with. Yeesh.
- patall 2y ago
  In the article it says energy for 70k households. Not saying you are wrong but that is substantial.
  - calibas 2y ago
    It could power 70k homes at full capacity. Important note, it wasn't at full capacity, and the entire county of Siskiyou is only about 40k people (not homes). Our power company, Pacific Power, said they didn't need the dam at all, and it would cost more to maintain than it was worth.
blackeyeblitzar 2y ago
A lot of the dam removal pressure is activist not scientific - people who have come to believe dams are evil because they aren’t natural. Some of it is cultural - with upstream tribal lands where people cannot practice traditional life or activities like fishing without returning fish each season. Some of it is practical - we don’t do a good job maintaining old dams and new replacement projects are expensive. But I do worry that the new dam removal movement is sacrificing renewable energy and flood control and navigable rivers for little gain, when they could find solutions that keep the dams and help upstream environments. Well designed ladders work efficiently. Fish don’t have to over exert themselves, make jumps (actual leaps to the next step) no bigger than they would naturally (with no dam), and have lots of resting spaces across the ladder where they can regain energy in gentle waters before continuing swimming and jumping upstream. They slowly gain elevation moving across spacious concrete tiers until they reach either a natural release point upstream enough that the strong flow into the dam doesn’t take them, or they end up in a hatchery. I feel like hatcheries are underrated. Sure the upstream habitats are not the same without the fish and associated ecosystem. But if you have the right equipment, staffing, funding, and all that (basically a good government) the hatcheries could be made to churn out more fish than would be naturally possible. That’s because the trip upstream naturally is hard and many fish won’t make it anyways.
- cruffle_duffle 2y ago
  Keeping the dam isn’t a ‘scientific’ decision because science doesn’t make decisions—it just tells us what might happen: more fish, less renewable energy, changes to flood control, etc. The real decision is about trade-offs, like how much we value fish versus clean energy, upstream ecosystems versus downstream economies, or cultural traditions versus infrastructure costs. Calling dam removal ‘activist’ implies the push to keep it isn’t. But keeping the dam is just as much about advocacy—it’s about prioritizing things like renewable energy or flood control. Neither side is more ‘scientific’ than the other; they’re both driven by values. Science helps us understand the stakes, but humans decide what matters most. That’s why this stuff gets so messy.
  - MostlyStable 2y ago
    Thank you. So many people confuse their own values with science. Science might say "If you take action X, thing A increases" and a person who values thing A hears "Science says we should take action X". That is not correct. Science informs you about the impacts of your actions (imperfectly), and it is a social/cultural/political (and most definitely not a scientific) discussion which of those impacts we actually prefer.
    - cruffle_duffle 2y ago
      Thank you—this is exactly the point. People confuse their own values with science, and ‘follow the science’ rhetoric only makes it worse. Science might say, ‘If you take action X, thing A increases,’ but deciding whether to take action X involves weighing A against everything else we care about—values, costs, benefits, and human experience. COVID was a perfect example of this. Policies like isolating grandma in a nursing home or pulling kids out of school for two years were framed as ‘following the science,’ but they ignored entire fields of science and vast parts of the human experience. Loneliness has measurable health consequences—science shows it can kill. So do we isolate grandma to protect her from COVID, or risk her dying of loneliness? Similarly, the science of childhood education tells us that pulling kids from school harms them for life. These are real trade-offs, rooted in human values, not just science. And to be frank, that entire discussion was shut down completely. The entire decision making process was incredibly one-sided and myopic. The same applies to dams. Decisions about whether to keep or remove them aren’t just ‘science versus activism.’ Both sides are informed by science, but they’re also driven by emotion, lived experience, and the values people hold. Science doesn’t tell us what to do—it gives us information about potential outcomes. What we choose depends on how we weigh those outcomes and whose priorities matter most. When rhetoric like ‘keep the dam = science, remove the dam = activism’ takes over, it oversimplifies these deeply human decisions and turns them into unnecessary battles. At the end of the day, it’s not ‘us vs. them’—it’s all of us trying to navigate complex trade-offs in a way that reflects the full spectrum of what matters to humans.
patall 2y ago
One is surely sediment erosion. All the small gravel that would usually end up in the delta being collected behind the dam. I.e like here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Restoration_of_the_Elwha_River#Sediment_load https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Restoration_of_the_Elwha_River...
kristjansson 2y ago
It's not just cost of a retrofit. Like other structures, the utility of a dam depreciates over time. Unlike other structures, some of that is due to sediment accumulating behind the dam, not the facility itself wearing down. This happens faster than you'd expect - service life for a dam can be <100 years. Maintaining the facility at full capacity means dealing with the sediment, not just the dam itself. For example, look at what LA County is having to do in the San Gabriels to maintain a damn we want to keep [1]. [1]: https://www.amesconstruction.com/project/san-gabriel-reservoir https://www.amesconstruction.com/project/san-gabriel-reservo...

Then why couldn't they make that work for this damn? I'm assuming there must be other motivating factors for removing the damn.

by proee 2y ago

Then why couldn't they make that work for this damn? I'm assuming there must be other motivating factors for removing the damn.

davidw 2y ago

Most of the Klamath dams were pretty old and not all that useful for other things like electricity generation or flood control, IIRC. I drove through Klamath Falls yesterday... that storm is sure going to give the river a lot of water to work with. Yeesh.

patall 2y ago
In the article it says energy for 70k households. Not saying you are wrong but that is substantial.
- calibas 2y ago
  It could power 70k homes at full capacity. Important note, it wasn't at full capacity, and the entire county of Siskiyou is only about 40k people (not homes). Our power company, Pacific Power, said they didn't need the dam at all, and it would cost more to maintain than it was worth.

blackeyeblitzar 2y ago

A lot of the dam removal pressure is activist not scientific - people who have come to believe dams are evil because they aren’t natural. Some of it is cultural - with upstream tribal lands where people cannot practice traditional life or activities like fishing without returning fish each season. Some of it is practical - we don’t do a good job maintaining old dams and new replacement projects are expensive. But I do worry that the new dam removal movement is sacrificing renewable energy and flood control and navigable rivers for little gain, when they could find solutions that keep the dams and help upstream environments. Well designed ladders work efficiently. Fish don’t have to over exert themselves, make jumps (actual leaps to the next step) no bigger than they would naturally (with no dam), and have lots of resting spaces across the ladder where they can regain energy in gentle waters before continuing swimming and jumping upstream. They slowly gain elevation moving across spacious concrete tiers until they reach either a natural release point upstream enough that the strong flow into the dam doesn’t take them, or they end up in a hatchery. I feel like hatcheries are underrated. Sure the upstream habitats are not the same without the fish and associated ecosystem. But if you have the right equipment, staffing, funding, and all that (basically a good government) the hatcheries could be made to churn out more fish than would be naturally possible. That’s because the trip upstream naturally is hard and many fish won’t make it anyways.

cruffle_duffle 2y ago
Keeping the dam isn’t a ‘scientific’ decision because science doesn’t make decisions—it just tells us what might happen: more fish, less renewable energy, changes to flood control, etc. The real decision is about trade-offs, like how much we value fish versus clean energy, upstream ecosystems versus downstream economies, or cultural traditions versus infrastructure costs. Calling dam removal ‘activist’ implies the push to keep it isn’t. But keeping the dam is just as much about advocacy—it’s about prioritizing things like renewable energy or flood control. Neither side is more ‘scientific’ than the other; they’re both driven by values. Science helps us understand the stakes, but humans decide what matters most. That’s why this stuff gets so messy.
- MostlyStable 2y ago
  Thank you. So many people confuse their own values with science. Science might say "If you take action X, thing A increases" and a person who values thing A hears "Science says we should take action X". That is not correct. Science informs you about the impacts of your actions (imperfectly), and it is a social/cultural/political (and most definitely not a scientific) discussion which of those impacts we actually prefer.
  - cruffle_duffle 2y ago
    Thank you—this is exactly the point. People confuse their own values with science, and ‘follow the science’ rhetoric only makes it worse. Science might say, ‘If you take action X, thing A increases,’ but deciding whether to take action X involves weighing A against everything else we care about—values, costs, benefits, and human experience. COVID was a perfect example of this. Policies like isolating grandma in a nursing home or pulling kids out of school for two years were framed as ‘following the science,’ but they ignored entire fields of science and vast parts of the human experience. Loneliness has measurable health consequences—science shows it can kill. So do we isolate grandma to protect her from COVID, or risk her dying of loneliness? Similarly, the science of childhood education tells us that pulling kids from school harms them for life. These are real trade-offs, rooted in human values, not just science. And to be frank, that entire discussion was shut down completely. The entire decision making process was incredibly one-sided and myopic. The same applies to dams. Decisions about whether to keep or remove them aren’t just ‘science versus activism.’ Both sides are informed by science, but they’re also driven by emotion, lived experience, and the values people hold. Science doesn’t tell us what to do—it gives us information about potential outcomes. What we choose depends on how we weigh those outcomes and whose priorities matter most. When rhetoric like ‘keep the dam = science, remove the dam = activism’ takes over, it oversimplifies these deeply human decisions and turns them into unnecessary battles. At the end of the day, it’s not ‘us vs. them’—it’s all of us trying to navigate complex trade-offs in a way that reflects the full spectrum of what matters to humans.

patall 2y ago

One is surely sediment erosion. All the small gravel that would usually end up in the delta being collected behind the dam. I.e like here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Restoration_of_the_Elwha_River#Sediment_load https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Restoration_of_the_Elwha_River...

kristjansson 2y ago

It's not just cost of a retrofit. Like other structures, the utility of a dam depreciates over time. Unlike other structures, some of that is due to sediment accumulating behind the dam, not the facility itself wearing down. This happens faster than you'd expect - service life for a dam can be <100 years. Maintaining the facility at full capacity means dealing with the sediment, not just the dam itself. For example, look at what LA County is having to do in the San Gabriels to maintain a damn we want to keep [1]. [1]: https://www.amesconstruction.com/project/san-gabriel-reservoir https://www.amesconstruction.com/project/san-gabriel-reservo...