Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
19.5 Controlling a River's Flow?
Physical and conceptual control of a river go hand in hand, an increase in one fa-
cilitates an increase in the other; ultimately they really amount to the same thing.
Also, physical-conceptual control inevitably changes its object, in this case the
river. It first of all makes it a bounded object: it defines what the river is and what
it is not; what belongs to the thing to be managed and what does not; and naturally
assumes that it is a separate entity from those who manage it. Furthermore, it
makes the phenomenon conform to the numbers and other representations that are
used to describe and control it. If a map, for instance, depicts a particular layout of
the river and the river shifts its course or inundates its surroundings, this is seen as
a deviation from the 'real' river and measures are taken to prevent such devia-
tions: more dams are built, flood-protection reservoirs are constructed and an in-
creased number of meteorological stations are operated. Thereby, physical-
conceptual control is predisposed to render the river a static thing, both in thinking
and in material terms. In addition, resource management presupposes a degree of
predictability, because particular actions are intended to yield particular outcomes.
Data are gathered to know as much as possible about the river and to be able to
predict which effects a management decision will have. Discharge and water level
are constantly measured at a great many locations, precipitation and temperatures
are assessed and forecast and a database contains the same information for many
past decades. Not incidentally, the slogan on the power company's website reads:
“Hydro power is generated from countless elements. We know them all.” 8 Such an
approach sees the river as the sum of a host of different details that only need to be
known in order to properly deal with the river. Not only does this present the river
as made up from many little, separate elements, it also believes that all of them
can be known.
River water, however, defies such an approach in many ways. First of all, a
river is essentially a flow, not a bounded object. This implies that what are often
described as different parts of a whole, are in fact phenomena that could not exist
without the other parts. More than from different separate elements, a river is
made up from mutually dependent components. The salmon life cycle is only one
case in point. The river's flow incorporates its source, the groundwater, adjacent
bogs, the sea, the weather and different places, people and their activities. None of
them is really a discrete 'thing' on its own. Objectifying the river as a separate en-
tity severs all these relations and makes the very object meaningless (cf. Ingold
2008). Furthermore, trying to control a river is an endeavour against the river it-
self, because such an attempt can hardly deal with its inherent irregularity; sea-
sonal variations, floods, changes in the course and the continuous processes of
erosion and sedimentation make it very difficult to pin down what the river is and
even more challenging to control it. The Kemi River's surface is frozen for about
half a year and so is the ground around it. During the spring flood, the river's dis-
charge is more that tenfold the amount it carries during a dry summer. And while
8
http://www.kemijoki.fi/Kemijoki/kemijoki.nsf/indexLan2, last accessed on January 15,
2009
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