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Comment by morpheos137 | Hacker News Reader

I never understand people who oppose hydropower on an environmental basis. Here is the fact. A lake made by a hydroelectric dam is not much different from a naturally formed, river fed lake. Different river fed lakes have existed for billions of years. Yes, they fill with silt over time. No, the sky does not fall. See Stanley Pool for an example of a natural lake fed by a major river, i.e. the Congo.

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The problem in the PNW is that these lakes are bad habitat for our native salmon. The more dams we make, the less habitat there is for the salmon. It's not a matter of "oh we just don't like them on principal." Rather, they tore down the dam in Elwha because it eliminated what was previously a thriving spawning ground and replaced it with a silty lake full of invasive species.

Everything is interconnected, and it's a really typical technocratic attitude to say that it's fine in isolation. "Who gives a shit? It's just a bunch of fish." Analytical people eschew context. Analysis is about reducing everything to components. And guess what -- it has led us astray here.

It turns out in the PNW that salmon are a major part of the food chain for a lot of animals, and our hydropower efforts are suppressing that food chain. It's also making it really hard to find enough salmon to fish for ourselves.

You'll see similar problems with the Colorado River. The Hoover Dam has basically destroyed all the downstream ecosystems that relied on the water to create their living conditions. It's an ecological disaster in slow motion.

> that salmon are a major part of the food chain for a lot of animals

The rivers in the PNW tend to be nutrient poor, because they're mountain runoff. I've read that salmon swimming upstream and dying are a major provider of nutrients for the upstream ecosystem.

I don't think anyone opposes hydropower due to reservoirs, the concern is lifecycle species like salmon that are born at the headwaters of rivers, live their adult life in the ocean, and return to headwaters to reproduce. Dams get in the way, and the kill rate of dams even with ladders is enormous. The other big concern I see is access, e.g. canoeing or kayaking rivers, destroying fishing spots, culturally significant sites, etc.

There's another thing that destroys rivers: drying out. Not helped with rising average temperatures...

On the other hand with enough investment you can build artificial lakes instead. However, current economy does not value the abovementioned things enough to build artificial lakes.

If you compare hydro to nuclear, we can dump nuclear waste in a hole in the middle of the desert that is mostly dead. All the US nuclear waste fits in a football field at a depth less than 10 yards. Hydro harms living ecosystems with areas far far greater than that required for nuclear waste storage. We are talking about country wide scales.

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