[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.