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dam-l Re: Are You Serious?
Mr. Corso:
Thank you for your mail. First of I want to say that I am not saying
no to dams and reservoiurs. I am saying that they are proliferating
over and above a safe limit in most basins around the world.
Of course there's a place for them.
I have taken the liberty of forwarding this to the discussion list
I run, just to see what others in the field think of your views.
Of course I'm serious. There's a reason the Smithsonian recommends the page.
Why would I spend the last 8 years researching this if I wasn't serious?
I'm not being paid by an engineering firm - and I don't do the experiments.
I simply report the reviews.
If you really wish to go out on a geophysical limb I suggest you take up
Dr. Chao's findings with him. NASA doesn't hire hacks the last time I checked.
Have you read *any* of the peer-reviewed impacts literature on dams?
There exists a huge literature to examine. I suggest you start now.
My major concern is with the impacts on fisheries.
As to California - and I should point out that I am not in California -
so I assume you refer to Dr. Rozengurt - they have run into trouble by
profligate use of dams.
It is important not to waste natural resources and freshwater can certainly
be classed as that.
If you're going to build them, you should at least recognize that, like
anything else in the universe, there is an upper safe limit.
The problem is not reservoirs and dams per se but that there are too
many in the wrong places in the main and that they do not take into
account any of the ecological impacts.
Salinization of farmland and other problems are all linked to a surplus
of dams. The drop in fisheries is linked to too many dams.
There is an upper limit... and it's perfectly scientific as it happens...
no more than 25 to 30% of freshwater flow can be altered before
you get a cascade effect that screws up the habitat and the fisheries.
My God, overdammed basins are having trouble with salinization of
drinking water becasue of too many of these things. You want to sacrifice
fresh drinking water to coastal towns to your job??
And do you really want to sacrifice good farmland to try and water land that
shouldn't be growing water hungry crops because it's in the wrong ecosystem?
Califoirnia is mostly desert and hardly a fit place in the maijn to grow
anything that requires a lot of irrigation.
Until recently they didn't even bother using drip irrigation. Arid climates
are not meant to produce so much food. That's what flood plains are good for.
The planet is suffering a massive land use planing problems, and people
trying to overcome nature instead of working with it which is the root
of these problems.
The Midwest was no place to be growing most of the water hungry crops they
grow there. Grab a copy of Cadillac Desert.
Dams and Reservoirs have their place and enough promoters to choke a horse.
But the promoters don't point out how many problems too much water development
creates in a basin.
Hence the page. Why would I waste my time if it weren't true?
-Dianne Murray
Coordinator
Dam-Reservoir Working Group