Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
consider that dams have i nite life spans, determined in part by the rate at
which they i ll with sediment. h is has been known at least since the mid-
1900s, when ecologist and environmentalist Aldo Leopold noted: “We build
these dams to store water, and mortgage our irrigated valleys and our indus-
tries to pay for them, but every year they store a little less water and a little
more mud. Reclamation, which should be for all time, thus becomes in part
the source of a merely temporary prosperity” (p. 179).
h is temporary prosperity comes at an enormous price. When the costs of
a dam (environmental, cultural, or safety) outweigh the benei ts (l ood con-
trol, hydropower, water storage, and irrigation), we should consider remov-
ing it. Dam removal can be done successfully: in the United States, at least
600 dams have been removed since 1912; the majority of them were removed
at er 1980.
Along the Pacii c Coast, dams are being proposed for removal in California,
Oregon, and Washington in order to restore salmon spawning habitat. For
instance, four dams on the Klamath River at the California-Oregon border
are slated for removal to restore salmon habitat at er Northern California
Indian tribes i led lawsuits to restore their i shing rights. h ese tribes had
relied on salmon from the Klamath for food as well as cultural and spiritual
sustenance for millennia. At er dam construction, salmon populations plum-
meted on a river that once supported the third largest salmon run in the West.
toward a new policy of balance
and cooperation
h e past century has pitted ecosystems in the West against an economic
imperative of growth by an ambitious western society. Yet with each drought
or l ood, the costs mount—both to the ecosystems that are collapsing and to
the economy that reels with each disaster. An alternative paradigm for the
future would consider the relationship between sustainable water use and the
delicate balance of life within an environment that has evolved over many mil-
lennia. Human society must i nd its place as part of the delicate balance, not
apart from it. Achieving this balance will be both increasingly important and
increasingly dii cult in the future should the region's climate, as predicted,
become drier and punctuated by more l oods. Now is the time for policymak-
ers and residents to move toward a new, overarching policy of collaboration, to
act together for the collective good and the survival of the region.
