TORPEDO the DAMS

Joel Hedgpeth
1998

American Bald Eagle with fish kleptoparasitized from an American Osprey

Compiled by
Robert Roy van de Hoek
March 1, 2001
Spring Equinox Approaching
Malibu, California

Silenced Rivers: The Ecology and Politics of Large Dams, by Patrick McCully. Zed Books, London & New Jersey, 1996, xv+350 pp., $24.95 paper.

In December, 1945, then Governor Earl Warren convened a "California Water Conference" to discuss the California Water Plan. As he neared the end of his opening address he said "...in my opinion we should not relax until California has adopted and put into operation a state-wide program that will put every drop of water to work."

The Governor was probably unaware that he was repeating Josef Stalin's dictum that "Not a drop of water must escape to the sea." Obviously, it did not occur to either leader that the water in rivers was working and that excessive diversion would have profound consequences.

Patrick McCully has done an impressive job gathering the information contained in Silenced Rivers, and it is no criticism of the book to point out how little has changed with our bankers and engineers and politicians since 1984, when Edward Goldsmith and Nicholas Hildyard published The Social and Environmental Effects of Large Dams. In many ways Silenced Rivers takes over where the previous book left off. Both books provide compelling evidence that the construction of large dams results in more ecological damage than they are worth, and that nearly all dams cost much more than estimated. Construction of dams in unsuitable and dangerous locations continues to be the rule rather than the exception, and banks continue to obligingly provide the unanticipated overruns.

I began my professional career in 1938 as part of the crew assembled to study what could be salvaged of the fish populations of the Sacramento River threatened by the construction of Shasta Dam. At that time nobody knew--and few cared--how many fish would be lost. On the basis of counts during the irrigation season, when a diversion dam was installed, at least 27,000 fish passed through the counting weir at Redding. This suggested a potential production of 94,500,000 eggs!

Unfortunately, our study was not even begun until the keyways for the dam had already been dug and concrete was being poured. There was no possibility of salvaging these runs and there were no suitable, accessible streams or equipment to handle the fish. The last great tributary above the dam site was the McCloud, whose headwaters included a vast stream of icy water flowing out of the lava from Mount Shasta's bygone activity. We of that last research crew witnessed the passing of the last salmon of the McCloud. As we were prepared to leave the river, we were informed about the plan to dam the Trinity River and divert its water through a tunnel to the Sacramento River. The dam was completed in 1952. Another great salmon river was destroyed.

In many parts of the world, unidentified or unknown fishes are endangered by dams; there are probably hundreds of undescribed species in the streams and lakes of Africa, Indonesia, and the Philippines for instance. Many of them support the natives along the rivers, whose environments will disappear when some ruler decides he needs electric light in his palace, and whose delusions of grandeur have been nourished by unscrupulous investors from distant climes.

One of the most disturbing results of all this dam building has been the removal or "resettlement" of native people. Since figures are not known in each case, no effort has been made to suggest the total number of people displaced by dams. But a tally of available figures suggests that the recently started Three Gorges Dam in China may displace more people than all other dam projects combined.

McCulley's chapters grind on and on with such titles as "Rivers No More," "When Things Fall Apart," "Paradise Lost," and "Temples of Doom." They are introduced by some fatuous quotation from a dignitary or a bit of verse more or less appropriate to what follows. Evidently he could not find any suitable place for Algeron Swinburne's "even the weariest river winds somewhere safe to sea." Perhaps because there is too little left even to be weary after the dam makers get through. Nor does he quote Kenneth E. Boulding's "A Ballad of Ecological Awareness":

There are benefits, of course, which may be countable, but which
Have a tendency to fall into the pockets of the rich,
While the costs are apt to fall upon the shoulders of the poor.
So cost-benefit analysis is nearly always sure,
To justify the building of a solid concrete fact,
While the Ecological Truth is left behind in the Abstract.
-- (From Careless Technology: Ecology and International Development, Natural History Press, 1972)

But "ecological truth" does not seem to be in the vocabularies of California water users. Indeed, it is unsettling to consider how little progress has been made in the past half century. (Who reads these books except the converted, anyhow?) It is a slow movement toward the sensible approach, toward a reverence for rivers and a due appreciation for the role they play in our natural systems.