[aesch]

I read a fascinating article on this dam removal last week! https://hakaimagazine.com/features/the-other-side-of-the-wor...

The article tells both sides of the story of the dam removal in as fair a way as I think is possible. Many of the locals were against it and there was a strong advocacy group that fought for it, including a tribal constituency.

I came away from the article feeling I understood both sides better but with less certainty about what was the right choice.

[s1artibartfast]

Not a bad article, all things considered, but I do think it gives a shallow treatment to reasons of the objectors to dam removal.

How many people are impacted and how? Will they lose their businesses, jobs, and life savings?

The closest it comes is talking about the spotted owl, where 30,000 people lost their loverhoods without compensation due to an environmental regulation that not only failed to deliver, but was doomed from the start. What are the parallels here?

[kristjansson]

> According to PacifiCorp, the Oregon-based company that owns the Klamath dams today, the structures are mainly monitored and controlled remotely—from Lewis River, Washington, more than 500 kilometers away. Local jobs add up to 13, and all the affected employees either retired, voluntarily left the company, or will be reassigned within it.

from the link. probably a few more people in recreation indirectly affected, but these are small, remote reservoirs. It's not like we're draining Lake Powell here[1]

[1]: be still my beating heart

[s1artibartfast]

I was thinking more in terms of farmers and community along the river, people with lakeside land, and those downstream exposed to flooding, essentially wherever there opposition is pulling it's support from.

[kristjansson]

These are mountain dams, without meaningful irrigation or flood control applications, and dwindling hydroelectric utility. They impounded 3 reservoirs with a total surface area ~1/20th of Lake Washington, one of which has ~100 privately owned frontage parcels. Those owners lose their lakefront, but in a few years will enjoy views over and access to a river valley instead.

Well founded objections should be treated with respect, but I think there's a lot of resistance that's born of (a) reflexive opposition to the 'other side' (b) false generalization of dam-removal arguments applicable to specific dams to all dams, and (c) the incorrect assumption that existing dams must have some utility (equivalently, unawareness of just how many __useless__ dams cover the west, these Klamath dams among them).

[s1artibartfast]

I dont think I'm pulling from generalizations, just the stated impacts form the people that live there. The article talks about farmers "storming" meetings and their water from the Klamath being cut off in the past.

Im not even trying to argue these people are correct, Im just perplexed that you seem to deny that the people the article talks about even exist

[kristjansson]

I didn't say you were generalizing, I said that some (esp. ex post, sympathetic) resistance to removal seems to come from generalizing the removal proponents' desire to remove _these_ dams to a desire to remove _other_ dams. Resisting the removal out of concerns about irrigation (in which these dams play ~no role) or hydroelectricity (of which these dams' contribution was minimal) makes sense if the resistors assume that future efforts will move more directly against their interests. I don't think this is far off - see all the stuff in the article about Agenda21, everything being a pretext for removing the current residents, etc.

However, I hold that assumption is incorrect. I believe whole multi-decade process of local consensus-building and compromise that got to removal on the Klamath is a model for future efforts, which will be at least as sensitive to completing interests as these were. Your initial point about the shallowness of objections in TFA is testament to that process. The 'storming' episode you mention happened in ~2003. The failed deliveries from the Klamath were in 2001, and were the result of competing federal priorities (prior-appropriation private water rights, the endangered species act) coming to a head. The farmers seem to have had their concerns addressed since then - all the relevant local irrigation districts were signatories to both the (failed) Restoration Agreement and the (successful) Settlement Agreement.

I think TFA treats the most serious and well-founded objection very sensitively, toward the end:

> I find myself holding two realities in mind that seem hardly able, these days, to share the same space. The first is that the dams have amounted to an ongoing assault on Indigenous communities and rights, and on the many fish that move between fresh water and the sea; removing the barriers will right historical wrongs. The second is that the identities of many people here—their memories, ways of life, worldviews, sense of purpose, idea of home—are bound up in the dammed landscape and even the dams themselves.

This is the tension - once the competing economic and ecological interests are satisfied, the emotional interests remain. A landscape has to change, and a life-way it's supported will no long be possible in that place. That's unambiguously awful for people and families than enjoyed that landscape and life-way in the ~century since the dams were built. But their right to enjoy that landscape unchanged is not absolute; their loss has to be situated within the larger balance of costs and benefits of the project.

[perrygeo]

> How many people are impacted and how? Will they lose their businesses, jobs, and life savings?

A good place to start would be an economic analysis of all the people downstream, all the cultures and livelihoods that were lost due to the installation of the dam in the first place.

The dam was only up for less than a century, yet your statement implicitly assumes the water now belongs to those who control the dam. To claim that the dam beneficiaries are somehow the victims and the downstream communities are the bad guys for wanting their livelihoods back - preposterous and disingenuous.

Let's correct your error: the river has been feeding downstream cultures for centuries. Fishing on the Klamath was at one point a livelihood supporting tens of thousands of people. The dams (combined with the timber industry) have completely decimated the salmon habitat and the fishing industry with it. Those who installed the dam and used it did so explicitly to take resources from one place and use them for their own benefit. We have a word for that - theft. And now they're being asked to return those resources. The horror! Spare me the crocodile tears.

> The closest it comes is talking about the spotted owl, where 30,000 people lost their livelihoods without compensation

This is absolutely nothing like the spotted owl situation. This attitude of people vs nature is a false dichotomy. Salmon have cultural, economic, and nutritional value that makes them a keystone resource for those communities. The issue is not the salmon's survival, it's the survival of the people who depended on them.

[willsmith72]

People will believe and fight for literally anything, surely thousands of years of con men has taught us that. The fact that this guy with a whopping 4 generations in the area doesn't agree means next to nothing to me.

[s1artibartfast]

The point isnt that some guy doesnt agree, it is the ideas and information they are communicating.

[calibas]

A lot of the local opposition to dam removal is because of this guy specifically. Here's his article on why the toxic cyanobacteria that was in the former reservoirs is actually good for the river:

https://www.siskiyou.news/2024/01/24/blue-green-algae-in-cop...

It pretends to be a regular news site, and even "scientific", to the point where it fooled Google and his site was often at the top of search results. He was also aggressively promoting his articles on Facebook.

The guy is confusing green algae with bacteria. He's also ignoring the fact that the kind of blue-green "algae" in question, Microcystis aeruginosa, isn't the nitrogen-fixing kind. He has no clue was he's talking about, but that doesn't stop him, and he's unfortunately a major source of "knowledge" (confusion and misinformation) for the locals here.

[aliasxneo]

> Resistance to dam removal on the Klamath is emblematic of the profound mistrust of official narratives that increasingly leads to such upside-down outcomes as survivors of climate disasters denying climate change, or rural communities accusing the wildfire fighters who protect their homes of deliberately setting the fires. Reservoir Reach is a place where, if KRRC is using helicopters to prep for dam removal, it must make sure the public knows that the choppers aren’t carrying out black ops against American sovereignty on behalf of the United Nations.

The author seems to have developed quite a strong bias about the area.

[marssaxman]

What about that statement sounds biased to you?

To my ears, that is a plain spoken description of the culture of the area, compatible with what I have observed myself over the years.

[s1artibartfast]

It seems like it is painting with an overly broad brush, condemnation by anecdote, and characterization by the negative extremes.

But then again, I have my own priors, which probably bias me to thinking these people have legitimate reasons to distrust authorities who view their lives as expendable.

[aliasxneo]

We must have completely different experiences, then. What years and where were you active in the is area? I’ve been visiting for over a decade doing hiking, fishing, spelunking, etc. Every town had tin hatters, but to paint the whole town like that is certainly extreme.

[genter]

I've never heard anyone express concern about UN helicopters, but at least in Southern Humboldt, there was a huge fear about the state and federal government using helicopters to bust people for growing weed. My uncle had a camera in the kitchen that he or my cousins would grab and pretend to take pictures of low flying aircraft (it was illegal to fly too close and thus any evidence collected would be thrown out by the court). I wouldn't be surprised if less scrupulous people would do something with a deer rifle. PG&E still announces in Lost Coast Outpost when they're inspecting power lines.

I also heard that people at Trinity Pines were shooting at CalFire when they were helping with the fires 8 years ago. Hence the reason why it burned so bad.