
Removing One Maine Dam 20 Years Ago Changed Everything - howard941
https://therevelator.org/edwards-dam-removal/
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burtonator
> The coalition was made up of the nonprofits American Rivers, the Atlantic
> Salmon Federation, the Natural Resources Council of Maine, and Trout
> Unlimited and its Kennebec Valley chapter.

BTW... try to remember this when someone criticizes hunting / fishing. A major
part of sustainable hunting and fishing is making sure we have an environment
that actually produces quality fish and game.

Most people DO NOT give a shit about trout for example

I'm a trout fisherman and think they're an insanely beautiful species. When I
flew into Montana my trout stamp was like $150... non-trivial amount but
absolutely worth it.

~~~
tkjef
trout is my favorite fish to watch & to eat. i've also thrown back quite a
few.

fun fact: in a pinch if all you have is a little bit of pringles shake them up
into little crumbs, prepare the fish, sprinkle the pringles crumbles inside
the fish, cook wrapped in tin foil near a fire's embers and you have some good
eating with a bit of seasoning.

~~~
11235813213455
My problem with the catch and throw, is it seriously hurt fishes

~~~
tkjef
agreed. you have to be very careful taking out your hook.

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ghaff
Lest anyone is tempted to comment "But clean energy!" here's a relevant
paragraph:

"The dam produced only 3.5 megawatts of power, providing less than 0.1 percent
of Maine’s electricity. It employed only a few people and was aging and
unsafe, having been breached numerous times. It blocked critical upstream fish
habitat, including the migration of endangered sturgeon."

Especially in light of how breaching the dam did, in fact, bring the hoped-for
environmental benefits and more, getting rid of it was the right thing from a
cost/benefit perspective.

~~~
AdamJacobMuller
Hydro power is not green. It may be clean, by some definitions of clean, but
it has a huge ecological footprint.

The impact is harder to quantify than with other forms of power and is ignored
due to that.

Now, I'm not advocating against all hydro power, I think it's especially
important in a pumped storage/peaking capacity.

The projects definitely need to be analyzed on a cost/benefit analysis and as
this points out, 3.5MW of power is just trivial and not worth it.

As an aside, there are a number of dam removal videos on YouTube which are fun
to watch:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2yM5m5-1-I0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2yM5m5-1-I0)

~~~
AmericanChopper
The problem with this line of reasoning is that no energy is green by these
standards. The solar panel supply chain is not green, solar and wind farms
kill birds, dams destroy habitat, nuclear produces waste... if you think any
of those things are trivial, just google them and you’ll find plenty of people
lobbying against them.

If you accept that human are a part of the environment, and that we are going
to have some level of impact on it, then as you said, you can look at the
RoI/impact of decisions and their alternatives, and come a conclusion that
reduces impact. But if your standard is green/not green, then you’re never
going to be able to solve any problems.

~~~
AdamJacobMuller
> no energy is green

This is precisely my point of view.

You must consider the full lifecycle ROI.

I'm a particularly big fan of nuclear for that reason.

~~~
chessturk
How does the nuclear waste being dangerous for between 200 and 15.7 million
years[1] factor into the ROI? Not snark, I just can't fathom how to reliably
keep something sealed for 15.7 million years, much less the knowledge of what
it is or how to handle it if it becomes unsealed. Otherwise, sign me up for
atom smashing/fusing.

Does that factor in to your thinking?

[1]
[http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2015/ph240/sherman2/](http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2015/ph240/sherman2/)

~~~
barry-cotter
You’re referencing an undergraduate memo. I’m sure you could find something
more authoritative if you want to try and convince people nuclear waste is an
insoluble problem.

Nuclear waste is a political problem not a technical one. It’s either still
hot and could be used for fuel or not and relatively safe. The hot stuff can
be burned in reactors; we don’t because that requires plutonium cycle with the
obvious weapons uses. Cold waste can be allowed to decay for a few decades,
vitrified by mixing with molten glass so it’s chemically inert and stored in a
geologically inactive area, anywhere far from continental plate boundaries
deep in the ground[1]. It could also be dumped in deep marine trenches at
subduction boundaries where it would eventually be returned to the earth’s
core. If you want to get it off Earth altogether I’m sure we could get it to
the moon if we really wanted.

[1][https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yucca_Mountain_nuclear_waste_r...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yucca_Mountain_nuclear_waste_repository)

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shawnee_
> The Kennebec hadn’t run free here since 1837.

Interestingly enough, it was Thoreau's inventory of species in these very
streams and tributaries as documented in _The Maine Woods_, which can tell us
how we're doing with the restoration of the waterways today. Thoreau's book
was comprised of notes from three visits in 1846, 1853, and 1857, and he had a
pretty early and close insight as to how bad the damage was from the get-go.

At the end of the book, in the appendix, he noted several introduced species.
Since he often used "Indian" guides to help him navigate upstream, he also had
the opportunity to learn a bit about what species were native and what were
brought in by the newcomers. (Disclaimer: my mother was one-quarter indigenous
to one of the tribes Thoreau mentions, so I've studied these texts pretty
thoroughly).

Several interesting musings on the encroachment of the white man into these
lands; this one especially:

> Tahmunt said that he traded at Quebec, my companion inquired the meaning of
> the word Quebec, about which there has been so much question. He did not
> know, but began to conjecture. He asked what those great ships were called .
> that carried soldiers. " Men-of-war," we answered. " Well," he said, " when
> the English ships came up the river, they could not go any farther, it was
> so narrow there ; they must go back, go-back, that 's Que-bec." I mention
> this to show the value of his authority in the other cases.

[146 THE MAINE WOODS:
[https://archive.org/stream/mainewoods00thorrich/mainewoods00...](https://archive.org/stream/mainewoods00thorrich/mainewoods00thorrich_djvu.txt)]

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jakedata
I can personally attest to the dramatic change in the environment since the
removal of the Edwards dam. Of course this year there are so many pogies
(Alewife) that you can just about walk across the water. Warming waters down
south are causing them to shift northward in search of cooler temperatures.
Offering welcoming habitats to shifting populations seems the very least we
can do for these species.

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acd
Water dams are not good for the eco system down stream. My country has close
to 99% green electricity but a lot is from water power. Water power is not
that green because the dams prevents the eco system down stream to function
normally. Also fish can not reproduce because they need to be able to climb up
and down the river which has dams which blocks movement.

Further the 99% green electricity is causing a lot of big clouds data centers
to be located here. But the clouds run on water power.

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hairytrog
I wonder if rehabilitation is always possible. The Italian region of Südtirol,
in the alps, is completely hydro powered with large exports. And there are
basically no fish. What happens if they undam it all today? What if they undam
it in 500 years? Does it just take a decade or two for a pretty complete
rehab?

~~~
Retric
Stocking fish is common in much of the US. Presumably, the same basic strategy
would work on any non polluted river.

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cbsks
Also note the dams removed from the Elwha River in Washington:
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elwha_Ecosystem_Restoration](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elwha_Ecosystem_Restoration)

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chr1
If removing dams is so beneficial, would elimination of natural waterfalls
(e.g. Niagara) be beneficial as well? If not why?

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excitom
Dams represent man-made changes to the environment that often had unforeseen
negative impacts.

In the case of Niagra Falls, its presence isolates the Great Lakes ecosystem
from the Atlantic Ocean. During many millennia a unique ecosystem developed.
When the canal was built to allow ship traffic from the ocean into the Great
Lakes, it caused a sequence of ecological disasters due to invasive species.

The lesson: Don't screw around with mother nature (adding or subtracting)

~~~
hammock
Serious question, what is unique about the Great Lakes ecosystem, that is not
found in, for example the PNW or inland Maine?

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ghaff
It's a massive interconnected freshwater lakes system. Much different from
even the relatively small lakes in Maine much less the generally very small
lakes in the PNW. And it's in a very different area of the country so
different ecosystem in any case.

~~~
hammock
I know where they are located and the size of the lakes. Anything specific and
unique you can offer about the _biological_ ecosystem, e.g. flora, fauna?

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gerikson
John McPhee describes the demolition in _The Founding Fish_.

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tropicalia
Nothing against the dam removal -

but I wish someone would think of something to "Change Everything" so that one
day we'll see fewer clickbaity article titles.

