The Dams....

So I'm still not ready to go back to my personal story by writing, Comin' Full Circle Part II; instead, I want to write about something that is eating at me thanks mainly to my newfound passionate reading about the environment; and that is, those hydroelectric dams we in the Pacific Northwest have come to rely upon for power....

Early this fall I went to a showing of the movie Arid Lands, in fact, one of my first blog contributions on this site was about this movie; if you want to read about it, I'm sure you can find it. Anyway, this movie highlights the destruction of those dams; how once fertile and vibrant lands have become arid; meanwhile, water is being pumped to the once arid lands of Eastern Washington and Oregon to grow grapes. At the same time, the dams provide the electricity most of us use in the Pacific Northwest...our lights, our computers, ovens, microwaves, incubators keeping premature infants alive, breathing apparatuses for people who can breath on their own, dialysis machines, the trains I use to get around town, practically everything is in some way tied into the dams.

In the meantime, whole ecosystems are practically gone because of these dams; not only do the dams disrupt natural flows of the rivers, making everything less green and lush, but they disrupt the migratory routes of salmon; Derrick Jensen reminds me chapter after chapter of this in A Language Older then Words. He talks of salmon dashing themselves hopelessly against cement, trying, trying, trying to get to traditional breeding grounds. Some dams have "salmon elevators" which are suppose to help salmon get over the dams, but they largely don't work. In the movie Arid Lands, they showed a incredulous method at one dam of capturing salmon on one side of the dam, putting them in a big tractor trailer full of water, driving them 20 miles or so upstream, and then releasing them. One has to wonder how many even survive the trip?

So salmon are disrupted? Who cares really? Well if you don't care about salmon, consider the Native Peoples who relied on that salmon as their livelihood until the government decided to build these dams, in the 1920s and 1930s, to bring widespread electricity to the region. Not only did the Native folks who where still living in a somewhat traditional way at that time lose that, but the dams flooded many of their neighborhoods, destroying houses and displacing huge numbers of people. This was considered an ok loss, in order to improve the lives of the vast majority of people. Just another awesome example of the way the US government has had absolutely no consideration for Native lifestyles, lands, or even one of their major sources of income/food.

How else have the dams disrupted life? Bears, birds, basically all animals in the region have followed the migrations of the salmon in one way or another; some animals actually dining on the salmon, others getting out of the way of large predators as they moved closer to the river to feast on migrating salmon. This has all, of course, largely been disrupted. This area of the world is about as natural as high fructose corn syrup...and I am just as much to blame as anyone else. As I write, I am using electricity from these dams...my computer is sucking this evil electricity from the wall, a cup of tea heated in the microwave sits at my elbow. I drink wine from the region, somehow feeling better about my decision to purchase from local farmers, at the same time feeling guilty that the dams and irrigation from the dams are used to grow the grapes to make the wine.

Anyway, what to do about all of this? I have no idea...blowing up the dams is not my idea of the right solution, especially since people would lose their lives because of the machines that keep them alive.

Love ya,
Carrot