Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
for the milling of grains, among other things. Since the advent of the turbine generator
and modern transmission and construction technologies, rivers have been favored sites
for hydroelectric power generation to serve local, national, and international markets.
Larger installations create new lakes, alter the levels of existing lakes, change stream-
flow patterns, destabilize slopes, and act as focal points for new temporary and perman-
ent settlements. While serving a greater good, these projects often have negative loc-
al consequences in mountain valleys where long-established settlements, agricultural
and other land uses, transportation, and other infrastructure are inundated or disrupted
(Fig. 10.12). People are displaced from their homes and their livelihoods are comprom-
ised. Whether in the Himalaya, Andes, or the Cordillera of western Canada, large-scale
projects have engendered widespread public protests and discontent, as in the cases of
the Tehri Project on the Bhagirathi/Ganga River (Fig. 10.12) and the Lower Arrow Pro-
ject on the Columbia River, for example. Compensation has rarely matched the measure
of disruption in the mountain valleys. Micro-hydro installations that use run-of-the-river
technologies are less controversial, but they do alter streamflow in specific reaches of
rivers and streams. Rivers and river banks have served as means and locations for sol-
id and wastewater disposal, and they continue to do so. Rivers, streams, and lakes are
focal points for tourism, both recreational and pilgrimage, and thereby become embed-
ded in the economy of mountain people and places.
Rivers, streams, and lakes may also act, in concert with topography, as barriers to
movement in the mountains. They may have aided in protecting and defending settle-
ments but, for the most part, every effort has been made to reduce the barrier effect
through adaptive technologies ranging from ferries and suspension and cantilevered
bridges to modern pylon-supported and elevated suspension bridges (Fig. 10.1). In the
mountain world as a whole, all of these technologies, from the most rudimentary to the
most complex, are still in use.
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