When the river runs dry movie5/22/2023 Rivers restore their old characteristics amazingly quickly once their shackles are removed. Federal regulators have just approved an extraordinary plan to demolish four aging dams that for a century have been blocking salmon spawning runs on the Klamath River in California and Oregon, drawing protest from Native American tribes and fishermen. Simply ripping out obsolete structures can have a big effect, too, restoring rivers to a free-flowing state with tremendous ecological and recreational benefits. Already some 200 low impact projects in the United States have been approved or are pending certifications, and across Europe there may be nearly 30,000 more potential sites at old mills. Hydropower projects that are small enough to operate in reduced flows and small rivers can generate clean, renewable electricity with little environmental downside. Some technologies require no existing structures at all. While logistical issues make this particular idea a moonshot, there are plenty of opportunities to connect dams with renewable energy farms at a much smaller scale and lower cost.Ĭreative opportunities also exist for small, low-impact hydropower technologies - including modernized water wheels that can be retrofitted into existing or historical dam structures. One outlandish proposal to do this at a massive scale reimagines the Hoover Dam as a three-billion-dollar renewable energy battery, connecting it to vast new solar and wind farms. If reservoirs fall to the point where they can barely be used for hydropower, they can still be used to store intermittent wind and solar energy - by recycling water that has already passed through the dam’s turbines back into its reservoir. Projects like this one make the Mississippi’s ability to move sediment an asset rather than an expense. Using BP settlement money from the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill catastrophe, the Mid-Barataria Sediment Diversion would mimic natural delta-building processes in a place that has lost hundreds of square miles of coastal land over the last century. But in Louisiana, where coastal wetlands are disappearing rapidly, a roughly $2.2 billion proposal is advancing to divert part of the Mississippi River into Barataria Bay, where additional sediment can help protect it from rising sea levels. The good news is that we are already reimagining what rivers can do - and what they can be.īecause rivers deposit sand, plugging shipping channels and reservoirs, their power to move sediment is normally framed as a problem to be fixed by dredging. Radical new thinking is the only way to make sure our rivers endure. Agriculture is the single largest consumer of freshwater, and global food demand is still rising. Across the Atlantic in Germany, warmer temperatures and longer droughts have shrunk the Rhine River, making navigation harrowing on a waterway responsible for up to 80 percent of the country’s ship-bound cargo.Įconomic powerhouse rivers like these are being sucked dry not only by climate change but by fast-growing cities and farming operations that need more water. While water levels will recover modestly this week, thanks to some upstream rain and snow, the long-term forecast remains dry.Ĭonditions are even worse in the southwestern United States, where an ongoing 22-year drought - now the harshest in 1,200 years - has shriveled Colorado River reservoirs, straining water supplies for farms, cities and hydropower from the Hoover Dam. corn and soybean exports annually - has been stricken by drought since September, amid a time of global grain shortage and soaring food prices. This critical river and its tributaries - responsible for transporting more than $17 billion worth of farm products and 60 percent of all U.S. Deliveries of fuel, coal, industrial chemicals and building materials were similarly delayed throughout the nation’s heartland. Despite frantic dredging, farmers could move only half the corn they’d shipped the same time last year. Last month, record low water levels in the Mississippi River backed up nearly 3,000 barges - the equivalent of 210,000 container trucks - on America’s most important inland waterway.
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