The largest dam removal project in United States history is underway along the California-Oregon border — a process that won’t conclude until the end of next year with the help of heavy machinery and explosives.
The largest dam removal project in United States history is underway along the California-Oregon border — a process that won’t conclude until the end of next year with the help of heavy machinery and explosives.
Yeah there’s really no need for so many dams anymore, they were built to power hydroelectric stations that are no longer needed so this is a good thing.
Which is another really good point, sadly there’s a lot of invasive plant species that were unknowingly brought over by Europeans mostly for ornamental purposes which have had a devastating effects on native plant life
How is hydro power no longer needed?
I don’t think @LexiconDexicon@lemmy.world said hydropower is no longer needed. They just said there’s no need for so many dams anymore, and I think that’s correct in this case.
A lot of these older and extremely underpowered dams were built in important riverways. They decimated salmon runs but produced only small amounts of power in return. For a recent example, Elwha Dam removal in Washington State comes to mind. It and another dam produced only 38% of the electricity needed to operate one sawmill, but it killed salmon habitats. You can read a little about it here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elwha_Dam
No clue why he would think that. Hydro power is the best source of carbon-free power. It’s also the only reasonable way to do grid-scale storage we have. Unless we see a huge build-out in nuclear, hydro-power will be required for the next century.
I have no clue either as you misread what I wrote. MicroWave is correct, that was my meaning.
That’s not true. There’s TONS of viable alternatives. ex:
Pumped storage hydro is exactly what I was talking about when I said hydro is the only reasonable way to do grid-scale storage we have.
When your alternative is something that doesn’t exist yet, you are reinforcing my point that hydro is the only viable grid-scale storage tech we have right now.
What’s not well known is that dams also have a limited life – they silt up. They produce most hydro power when new, which declines as silt fills the dam, raising the bottom/lowering head.
There’s a great book I have somewhere, is it CADILLAC DESERT? about the big 20th century push to “tame nature” and dam every river to make it “produce”. Total folly.
This is a insane take. We absolutely need hydro power right now. It was the leading source of electricity before coal. More dams, please.
You can do hydropower without dams. Dams are incredibly destructive to ecosystems.
Do educate me.
It just seems like a huge waste of energy / resources to remove an existing dam than to remediate it somehow. I didn’t see any mention of if this generated power or how it’d be offset.
Not really an environmental win if this hydro power capacity was replaced by coal.