Warming to Dams?
Governor Schwarzenegger is pushing to finance the construction of two big dam projects in California, citing global warming as the reason. I wondered when this was going to happen.
The logic here is easy enough to grasp. California depends on its snow pack (and what is probably the world's most elaborate waterworks) for its water supply. As the world warms, freezing levels rise and snow pack is diminished. Without the natural reservoirs meting out snow melt during the dry periods, some kind of man-made water storage will be needed to make up for it.
The idea of building new dams seems a little anachronistic. In recent decades, the trend has been toward removing dams, not building new ones. The age of big dam projects -- at least in the US -- was widely thought to be over. Now this.
And it isn't just a California problem; many arid regions of the world are up against the same predicament. Building reservoirs seems like a simple enough solution until you take a closer look. For one thing, with more than 75,000 big dams in America alone, most of the best dam sites have already been developed. What's more, dams are expensive to build and politically contentious, as they displace people, transform habitat and interfere with migratory fish. Just maintaining, repairing and upgrading our aging dams is a massive expenditure -- one we shortchange at considerable risk. A dam failure could wipe out a lot of people very quickly.
Critics of the current plan say the Governor's proposed project is not really about global warming at all, but about giving Big Agriculture more subsidized water. Could be. Others argue that money should be spent shoring up the earthquake-vulnerable levees of the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, which, in the case of collapse would cut off water to millions of southern Californians. Probably right. Whatever the case, I suspect we're going to hear many more proposals to build dams in the name of global warming.
The logic here is easy enough to grasp. California depends on its snow pack (and what is probably the world's most elaborate waterworks) for its water supply. As the world warms, freezing levels rise and snow pack is diminished. Without the natural reservoirs meting out snow melt during the dry periods, some kind of man-made water storage will be needed to make up for it.
The idea of building new dams seems a little anachronistic. In recent decades, the trend has been toward removing dams, not building new ones. The age of big dam projects -- at least in the US -- was widely thought to be over. Now this.
And it isn't just a California problem; many arid regions of the world are up against the same predicament. Building reservoirs seems like a simple enough solution until you take a closer look. For one thing, with more than 75,000 big dams in America alone, most of the best dam sites have already been developed. What's more, dams are expensive to build and politically contentious, as they displace people, transform habitat and interfere with migratory fish. Just maintaining, repairing and upgrading our aging dams is a massive expenditure -- one we shortchange at considerable risk. A dam failure could wipe out a lot of people very quickly.
Critics of the current plan say the Governor's proposed project is not really about global warming at all, but about giving Big Agriculture more subsidized water. Could be. Others argue that money should be spent shoring up the earthquake-vulnerable levees of the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, which, in the case of collapse would cut off water to millions of southern Californians. Probably right. Whatever the case, I suspect we're going to hear many more proposals to build dams in the name of global warming.
1 Comments:
There was interesting little peice of future water fiction in the SF Chronical magazine of January 7, 2007. Water Woes, Projecting 60 years into California's thirsty future.
Which sadly does not seem to be online.
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