To build or not to build by Claudia Sonea

John Redding, regional spokesman for the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation in Boise said they are reconsidering dam construction which involves to tame rivers by dividing them, to prevent water from flowing in certain areas, to produce cheap hydroelectric power and can also involve environmental problems like soil erosion, species extinction, sprea of diseases. The dam construction era ended in 1966 once the dam of Glen Canyon was finished, but the growing of population, the fears about the climate change makes the governments rethink it. Statistics show the population of the Western states grew about 20 percent in the 1990s and continues its growth despite the fact that water supply is endangered by climate changes. The dams seem the solution to this growth and its implications, but are they really? How can they be when all over the country they are removing dams because of environmental concerns that promote a better quality of water, a better environment for fish. For example in Oregon four dams on the Klamath River will be destroyed in order to restore the salmon population and when Edwards dam was removed many dead salmons were released. Jay Manning, director of the Washington state Department of Ecology, said that although dams are not a very possible matter to take into account, they may well be a necessary harm as the only solution to the poor water supply. Furthermore, the demand for water is already high and there is also the pressure of climate changes that instead of snow in winter there will be rain, thus the slow-melting calotte that provides water in the summer months will not be formed anymore. On the other hand there are other options like conservation, storing water in natural underground aquifers, exploiting water from the mountains, desalination plants to make water from the ocean to be good to drink and even small dams for local use only. Washington's Democratic Governor Christine Gregoire already assembled a coalition of business, government and environmental groups and came up with the Columbia Basin River Water Management Plan. They will spend nearly $200 million to find ecologycal solutions for arid eastern Washington by approaching subjects like air quality, environmental assessement, nuclear waste, shorelands, etc. It is for no one surprise that many environmentalists sustained her plan. Dr. John Osborn, a Spokane physician and chairman of the Sierra Club chapter in Spokane considers dams as beneficial for business, but they overlap costs and environmental destruction and also they ignore possible solutions that would led to the improvement of the conservation. Nevertheless, the new dams cost more money then the government can actually afford and it's uncertain if dams will be the solution taken into account, only the Black Rock dam proposal in the Yakima River basin concludes estimates a cost of $6.7 billion to build and the profit would be of 16 cents/dollar spent. Taking a peep in the past more than 472 dams were built in California, Oregon-Washington state line, Montana (Aswan High Dam, Edwards Dam, Folsom Dam, Grand Coulee Dam, Hoover Dam, Itaipu Dam, South Fork Dam, Three Gorges Dam) and so on and so forth. Their decision will be taken in the benefit of the population, because they are in the same boat, so don't worry very much. Just wait and see.

by Claudia Sonea for PocketNews (http://pocketnews.tv)

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