Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
regarded as secondary to the goals of national progress and regional development
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towards which it was seen to contribute. This was in spite of the fact that the dam
was situated at the river's mouth and blocked migrating fish from entering the
river from the sea. A few years later, the salmon population in the Kemi River -
formerly one of the richest of the Baltic Sea - had ceased to exist. Salmon spawn
and hatch in the oxygen-rich waters of a fast-running river stretch and swim to the
sea as smolts when a few years old. In the sea they live for another couple of
years, feeding plentifully and growing big. Then they return to the river where
they were born, to spawn there themselves. Once this cycle is permanently broken,
it is rather difficult to re-establish a salmon population in a particular river (Karls-
son and Karlström 1994).
For centuries, salmon had provided a major source of nutrition and income for
the inhabitants of the region, particularly along the lower Kemi River. A brief de-
scription of the technology and organisation of the formerly prominent way of
salmon fishing on the river will shed light on the very different nature of this type
of river management. Salmon fishing was not about managing the water's gravity,
but about harvesting a particular quality from the river nonetheless. Salmon fish-
ing weirs provide an illuminating contrast to the hydroelectric dams portrayed
above: they were built also to regulate a certain aspect of the river, but interacted
with the stream in a somewhat different way.
Each year, when the ice on the river opened in spring, salmon began to swim
upstream from the sea and the farmers on the river's banks developed different
techniques for catching the valuable and nutritious animals. Probably the most ef-
fective and impressive of those was a type of weir that was constructed from the
5
Finland had just lost a war against the Soviet Union, and with it large territories and a
considerable share of its infrastructure, including one third of its hydropower production
capacity. The country had to re-settle over ten percent of its population from the ceded
areas, and pay large reparations to the Soviet Union. Particularly the province of Lapland
was seen as in dire need of infrastructure, as most of its bridges had been blasted and
buildings had been burnt by German troops retreating after the Finnish-Soviet armistice
in 1944. Hydroelectric stations on the Kemi River were considered a twofold solution:
They served both as bridges and for electricity production. Furthermore, they conformed
to the view - widely shared among the decision-makers in the far away national capital -
that Northern Finland is a store of resources that must be harnessed for national progress
and paying reparations (Massa 1994, pp. 200-266).
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It is worthwhile noting that these weirs almost completely disappeared from the Kemi
River not because of the collapse of the salmon population after 1948, but because of the
growing influence of the wood-processing industry throughout Lapland a few decades
earlier. The industry was interested in using the entire main channel of the river for loose
log floating, which at the time was cheaper than the previous practice of floating in rafts.
Only in very few places - usually in secondary river channels - did salmon weirs survive
until the construction of the first hydropower plant, after which also those sites had to be
abandoned. In the meantime, however, salmon fishing had of course continued employ-
ing other techniques, like mobile nets, hooks, etc.
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