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Dam busters
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In the last 12 years, over 400 hydroelectric dams and their associated reservoirs have been dismantled in the United States of America. While China is building dams all over the place, the United States is tearing them down. Why?
The reason given for the destruction of our dams is to restore wild rivers and endangered salmon and other species. In short, it’s to restore the environment to its original natural state. But global warming is a reality. The primary cause of global warming is the burning of fossil fuels. The associated rise of sea levels and unstable weather patterns are caused by heat and burnt gases trapped in the earth’s atmosphere. The global ice sheets are melting off of continental land mass and thus are adding water volume to the sea. The willful destruction of hydroelectric dams and reservoirs contribute to global warming, not diminish it. Because electrical power consumers have to then buy their power from fossil fuel powered plants. There has been no new nuclear power plants built in the United States in 30 years.
The destruction of the reservoirs causes increases in surface temperatures, a decrease in water quality and an increase in reliance on subsurface water sources, which often contain chemical contaminates. Thus there will be an increase in cancer rates.
People like to gather around reservoirs for recreation. They like to camp. It’s one of the cheapest forms of recreation today. Destroying reservoirs forces campers and boaters to concentrate around other natural and man-made lakes. People have to drive further and spend more on gas and such to restore endangered salmon species. One has to remember that international corporate-controlled fishing fleets over-fish the oceans and decrease the numbers of endangered salmon species returning to their natural spawning streams and rivers. By increasing salmon hatcheries and encouraging more commercial fish farms, fewer species of salmon will go extinct. Creating artificial water channels which bypass natural streams down stream of hydroelectric dams should end damage to spawning areas and see more returning fish. Also, increased efforts by environmentalists to move the large salmon beyond reach of dam turbines will insure species survival. One has to wonder if the wholesale destruction of America’s clean and paid for hydroelectric industry by the “dam busters” is really for the salmon and natural environment, or if it is really for the international corporate fossil fuel industry.
— Michael Maggetti