Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
people fished with a host of different nets, depending on whether they were fish-
ing in a rapid, in a slowly-flowing stretch or close to the shore. When the salmon
stopped rising upstream around the end of July, the large weirs were deconstructed
and people fished predominantly with dragnets. Even later in the year, stationary
nets were used that were spread on the bottom of quiet and shallow pools. When
in early autumn the salmon would settle in particular places to spawn, fisher peo-
ple would use fish forks to catch them. Finally, salmon returning to the sea in late
autumn were caught in bow nets placed in rapids where the river would not freeze.
19.4 Degrees of Management
Salmon weirs and hydroelectric dams constitute two particular constructions that
have been built across the Kemi River in order to harvest a particular quality from
it. The former were meant to make the rising salmon accessible to humans taking
advantage of their migration pattern, the latter are made to make accessible the
power inherent in the river's water due to the elevation from the sea level and the
slope of the stream. Both types of construction can be therefore referred to as
'regulators' of the river and their utilisations display many similarities. The rela-
tions of the respective actors with the river seem very different, however. While
salmon weirs clearly represent a means of attentive engagement with the river,
hydroelectric dams appear to embody an attempt to control it. The former appear
to be an expression of the mutual influence of landscape and people; the latter a
part of a regime of resource management.
A relation, where one side manages the other, presupposes a certain degree of
sovereignty and control over the other side. Only if we are in a position to some-
what impose our ideas on something can we manage it. Imposing ideas on, or ap-
plying a ready-made plan to an environmental phenomenon implies that the actor
has to command both physical and conceptual power over this phenomenon. On
the one hand, the very material dimensions of the environmental event must be
controlled; on the other hand, this intervention must concur with a particular im-
age of the environmental phenomenon: what it is like, why it must be managed
and how it is likely to react to this intervention.
Hydroelectricity production has often been portrayed as a means of effectively
controlling a river. The very architecture and related symbolism of large dams
epitomises human mastery over nature (Blackburn 2006, pp. 189-197 on dams in
Germany; or Worster 1985 on water engineering in the US American West), or the
“technocratic hubris of engineering and its claim to outwit and control nature”
(Adams et al. 2004, p. 1932; see also McCully 2001). It is worth the while to in-
vestigate how far hydroelectric dams on the Kemi River actually conform to this
claim.
The power company, according to this claim, has to control the Kemi River
both physically, through dams, reservoirs, channels and floodgates; and conceptu-
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