Comment by notabotiswear
20 hours ago
> Many NOOMBYs consider local dams indispensable ties to their community’s past; in Billerica, some town officials have objected to the demolition of the Talbot Mills Dam on the grounds that “it has long served as a symbol of the Industrial Revolution” that remains “unquestionably one of the major focal points in the area.”
I used to hate the "but what about historical site upstream?" argument often used against dams. The prioritisation of a few tombs and piles of stone over what would improve the lives of thousands to tens of millions living now. It's kinda ironic seeing the same asinine argument being used from the other side...
That said, reducing dams to just hydroelectric generation is probably going to skew the narrative to the wrong direction.
I think the fact that the same bogus argument is used both against dam building and against dam removal shows that it's bogus and not compelling. When someone is against something, they will use whatever argument they can concoct. Saying that something is historically significant seems to work great. As if history is some god that must be served no matter what.
They are also very difficult, and very expensive, to maintain as they age. There is a small hydro damn near where I live that predates WWII and the county/state cannot find anyone who wants to take it over because of the expense in repairing it. This is in part due to seismic retrofitting which needs to happen, but also a variety of other factors, including being built basically on silt, having a public road on top which people need to get to their homes, and simply updating the aged equipment which has been on its last leg for a while.
What's more, the dam installation changed the local water table level, and residential wells drilled since the 1940's only had to go down so far. If the dam is removed, all these wells will dry up, and the state is beginning to make it difficult to drill new wells, and they certainly don't want to shell out to install plumbing to unincorporated communities which don't vote for the majority party anyway.
Another dam nearby held a massive amount of water for one of the bigger cities in the state. This is on the west coast, and if we get the Big One, it'll flood a populated area with hundreds of thousands of people. So they've had to draw down on the water levels and it's basically useless now, but deconstructing the dam would probably be a project requiring federal money, and since it's an earthen dam in a seismic zone there isn't really any retrofitting that you can do to fix it.
Basically, dams will give you some cheap electric and a water supply for a while but after 50-70 years they're a huge liability.
What do dams do besides hydroelectric generation?
Dams create large bodies of water that change ecosystems and provide focal points for human communities. They certainly do more than just hydroelectric.
An example would be Lake Pillsbury in Northern California which the dam has not done hydroelectric for decades but the fight to prevent demolishing the dam has had plenty of local support.
Flood control and water storage for agriculture in drier summer months are the big ones.
In addition to other answers, dams are sometimes used for mechanical power without generating electricity. More likely to be historic use than current use, but also likely to be a candidate for removal for fish habitat.
They fill up with sediment and emit large amounts of methane from decaying organic matter.
The one Andrew Carnegie and his friends mismanaged and killed thousands of people with was for recreation.
I think you probably meant Andrew Carnegie
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