[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

[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.