While reading Wandering Home, I was drawn to McKibben’s description of the environmental group Earth First! and their many radical pursuits. McKibben recounts the group’s first ceremony on top of Glen Canyon Dam where they unroll a black plastic crack down the side of the dam. After reading this passage I immediately thought of Patagonia’s Damnation, which examines the negative ecological and economic effects that dams can pose. In Damnation, activists have followed the actions of Earth First! and have painted large, black cracks on the side of multiple dams. With the help of this film there has been a growing consensus on the ecological disturbances created by dams and raises the question of whether obsolete dams or dams located in protected areas should be removed.
There are about
50 dams within the Adirondack Park. Most of these dams were created on land
once privately owned by logging companies. While many are small, they still can
have a pronounced affect on the surrounding landscape. They can alter the path
and intensity of rivers as well as disrupt the routes of migrating fish. There
are six dams located in designated Wilderness Areas. These Wilderness Areas are
defined as a place where man is only a visitor and does not leave a noticeable
mark. Given this definition the presence of dams is a direct contradiction to these
Wilderness Areas and the term “Forever Wild.”
As we try to keep these lands
protected and unaltered, how do we address the presence of a dam? Should the
dams be removed to restore the ecosystem, or should they be left alone to fall
in their own time? There is also the question of whether we continue to
maintain the dams and disregard the fact that they have affected the local
ecosystem. But if we make an exception for dams, what else can we make an
exception for? Where do we draw the line in our definition of a Wilderness Area?
Wandering Home, Bill McKibben
Dams and Wilderness,
Adirondack Explorer
http://www.adirondackexplorer.org/stories/dams-and-wilderness
Damnation http://damnationfilm.com/
http://www.adirondackexplorer.org/stories/dams-and-wilderness
Damnation http://damnationfilm.com/
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ReplyDeleteI was really excited when I saw this blog post, because the dam issue was something I was also interested in after reading Bill McKibben. I too watched "Damnation" and agree with Earth First!'s stance on dam removal, because we've tried to control natural forces for long enough and clearly we are doing more damage than it's worth. The movie includes both sides of the debate: employees of hydroelectric power plants who support the "green" energy source, and local fishermen who have noticed the dams' affects on fish migration. However, the movie is still biased in my opinion towards dam removal; they practically give a superhero cape to that Earth First! guy who trespassed onto the dam and painted a crack and then evaded a forest ranger in a car chase through the woods.
ReplyDeleteAfter reading your wonderful post, I looked up the website you referenced, and was glad I did, because the article perfectly juxtaposes the issues: lose the beautiful pond by taking out a dam, or take out a dam to remove human influence and return the area to its natural state. The article gives an example from when Tropical Storm Irene, in August 2011, destroyed an old logging dam in Duck Hole, a pond in the High Peaks Wilderness Area. Hikers asked the state to repair the dam, but the DEC decided not to rebuild it. The pond, therefore, drained because the dam was what created it. I honestly don't know which side I agree with, but in this instance, the decision was already made for me.