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Media Myth
America’s Big Dam
Problem
Networks Ignore
Eco-campaign
to Save the Salmon
and Turn Out the Lights
While
environmentalists claim to battle for renewable energy, dams that
provide renewable power to 10 percent of the United States have come
under increasing attack.
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Power from the people – The three broadcast networks had a
news blackout on environmentalists’ campaign to tear down
America’s dams. In 13 months of network coverage, not one story
touched on the topic. By comparison, the top five newspapers did
65 stories on just one of the possible dam tear-downs.
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Other threats are important – ABC, CBS and NBC agreed that
some dangers to the dams – overwhelming storms, poor maintenance
and terrorism – were worthy of stories. Two-thirds of the network
stories about dams focused on such threats.
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Dam removal as government policy – A $7-million analysis of
the need to remove O'Shaughnessy Dam near San Francisco was
included in the president’s most recent budget, though the dam
provides power and water to a major city.
Now the world
holds seven wonders that the travelers always tell
Some gardens and some towers, I guess you know them well.
But now the greatest wonder is in Uncle Sam's fair land
It's the big Columbia River and the big Grand Coulee dam.
– “The Grand Coulee Dam,” Woody Guthrie
By Dan Gainor
The Boone Pickens Free Market Fellow
America’s dams are in danger. Not just from terrorists or the
ravages of time, but from the extreme fringe of the environmental
movement. Operating under a well-organized national campaign, groups
like Environmental Defense, the Sierra Club and others are
systematically trying to tear down dams, destroy hydroelectric
facilities and prevent new dams from being built.
In many cases, it’s simply to save fish, especially
salmon.
The battle is being fought by lawyers, lobbyists, volunteers and
eco-friendly scientists. In January 2007, the
U.S. Interior Department ruled power company PacifiCorp must spend
hundreds of millions of dollars to build fish ladders across its
Klamath River dams or tear down those very same dams, eliminating
power for 70,000 people.
A May 2006 Supreme Court ruling sided with “fish and kayakers” over
hydroelectric plants, saying “that state regulators may require a
steady flow of water over power dams,” according to the May 16,
2006, Los Angeles Times.
And the network news shows aren’t telling viewers
anything about it.
A Business & Media Institute analysis of broadcast news shows from
Jan. 1, 2006, to Jan. 31, 2007, revealed no network stories on the
issue. But it was a topic that received extensive print news
coverage. The nation’s top five dailies – USA Today, The Wall Street
Journal, The New York Times, The Washington Post and Los Angeles
Times – all covered the controversy during the same time period.
In just the Klamath River case, those daily newspapers
covered the story 65 times during the 13 months. The Los Angeles
Times led the pack with 39 stories, but each paper wrote on the
issue at least once.
That’s because big things are happening in the
environmental movement. Since 1999, according to the Energy
Information Administration, hydropower facilities have been
decommissioned equaling more than 220 megawatts of power. In that
same time period, roughly 185 dams have been removed, reported Time
magazine, though not all were hydropower facilities.
America’s more than 2,500 hydropower facilities account
for roughly 10 percent of the U.S. energy supply or the equivalent
of 500 million barrels of oil. However, environmental extremists
oppose “Big Hydro” from dams – so much that they don’t even count it
as renewable energy.
The
Environmental Protection Agency still considers hydropower “a
renewable energy resource because it uses the Earth's water cycle to
generate electricity.” But major hydropower projects now face
opposition years after their construction.
According to the
Los Angeles Times, Oct. 1, 2006: “by 2002, environmentalists had
persuaded state legislators to require that California utilities get
at least 20% of the power they sell from renewable sources by 2017.”
Large hydroelectric
plants like the Hoover Dam were kept out of the definition of
renewable energy. Environmentalists don’t like the large dams
because they say “they harm fish and cause the buildup of silt,” the
Times reported.
Three major
battlegrounds pose even more significant losses to the U.S. power
grid. Environmentalists won a huge victory with the ruling on the
Klamath River dams. There are also active campaigns to remove
hydropower dams across the nation, including:
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O'Shaughnessy Dam –
This dam is 300 feet above the floor of the Hetch Hetchy Valley and
provides water and power to much of San Francisco. Its 400 megawatts
of power represent almost twice the total amount of hydropower
decommissioned from 1999-2005.
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Snake River dams –
The extreme left has been trying for years to remove the dams along
eastern Washington’s lower Snake River. According to a CNN.com
report from July 19, 2000, “Supporters of the Snake River dams say
closing down the dams' hydroelectric generators would eliminate
about 5 percent of the region's electricity.”
Dam Removal a
Recent Problem
More than 600 dams
were removed across the United States during the 20th Century, but
those removals escalated in recent years. With the decommissioning
of Maine’s power-generating Edwards Dam in 1999, removal became an
ongoing left-wing strategy. That removal raised the stakes because
“It was the first hydroelectric dam in the United States ordered
breached by the government against the dam owners' wishes,”
explained CNN.com in a July 19, 2000, story.
From that point on,
pressure mounted for more dam removals. In 2000, the four
hydroelectric dams on the Pacific Northwest’s lower Snake River even
factored in the presidential campaign. Then-presidential candidate
George W. Bush criticized his opponent Al Gore over the idea of
removing the dams. Bush defended the dams, but Gore took no formal
position. “Al Gore should take a stand. I say we can use technology
to save the salmon, without leaving the door open to destroying
these dams,” Bush said, according to CNN.com.
More dams were
removed. Maine’s first hydroelectric plant, the Smelt Hill Dam on
the Presumpscot River, was decommissioned in 2002, 110 years after
its construction. The million-dollar effort was mostly paid for by
the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, according to Waterpower Magazine.
Other hydropower dams were shut down in Georgia, Florida and
elsewhere.
But the big
environmental push was out West, and the targets had far more impact
on the power grid. The attacks on Klamath dams, along the
Oregon/California border, the ones on the lower Snake River in
eastern Washington and California’s Hetch Hetchy conflict all gained
momentum.
Pressure to remove
the Klamath dams was brought to bear on its owners at PacifiCorp.
The company was given little choice between building ladders for
salmon to travel over the dams and removing the dams altogether.
The March 30, 2006,
Los Angeles Times reported the ladders weren’t a practical solution.
“Construction of fish ladders over the dams could prove formidable.
The ladders would have to step an exhausting 120 times to top Iron
Gate Dam and run for nearly two miles. Biologists question if salmon
and steelhead trout would even use the ladders.”
A Jan. 31, 2007,
follow-up story admitted the ladders could cost $470 million, “as
much as $285 million more than the cost of removing the dams and
replacing the electricity for the next 30 years, according to a
government study.”
Nevertheless, that
was the choice ordered early in 2007 – either the ridiculous cost
for the ladders or removing the dams.
Meanwhile, other
environmentalists were battling to dismantle the dam at Hetch Hetchy.
The July 20, 2006, Los Angeles Times included a new report that
dismantling the dam “could range from $3 billion to nearly $10
billion.”
Opponents of
removal criticized the outrageous cost. Liberal Sen. Dianne
Feinstein (D-Calif.), the former mayor of San Francisco, called the
price estimate “indefensible” and warned it would leave the state
vulnerable to “drought and blackout.”
But
environmentalists were emboldened and said the billions of dollars
made removal feasible. As the LA Times reported: “‘This is a great
start,’ said Jerry Cadagan, chairman of Restore Hetch Hetchy, which
champions removal of the dam. ‘The state has declared that this can
be done. That’s something a lot of people have been reluctant to
admit for a long time.’”
According to the
Feb. 7, 2007, San Francisco Chronicle, the issue was alive and well
in President Bush’s new budget. “The president set aside $7 million
within the National Park Service budget to ‘support Hetch Hetchy
restoration studies’ that would explore the environmental and
recreational benefits of draining a reservoir that provides water
for 2.4 million Bay Area residents,” reported the Chronicle.
Dam History
Dams have a long
and useful history in the United States for everything from
recreation and flood control to power generation. At one time,
liberals even embraced them as signs of progress and a way to create
jobs. Democratic President Franklin Delano Roosevelt made dam
creation a significant part of his presidency.
Author John Berlau
recalled this fact in his book “Eco-Freaks.” In the chapter titled
“Hurricane Katrina: Blame It On Dam Environmentalists,” he reminded
readers that FDR dedicated the Hoover Dam in 1935. “This morning I
came, I saw, and I was conquered, as everyone would be who sees for
the first time this great feat of mankind,” the book quoted
Roosevelt.
FDR’s efforts with
the Tennessee Valley Authority also involved dam construction. In
fact, the FDR Memorial in Washington, D.C., incorporates the theme
of those water projects into its construction.
Folk singer Woody
Guthrie wrote fondly of dams, especially the Grand Coulee Dam, which
he called “about the biggest thing that man has ever done” in his
song of the same name. Gonzaga University professor of history
Robert C. Carriker described it as a genuine love of the dam. “To
Woody the dam stood as a monument of working-class consciousness and
solidarity,” he wrote in 2001.
But the left-wing
love affair with dams is long gone. A 2002 report even blamed dams
for global warming. The International Rivers Network report,
“Flooding the Land, Warming the Earth,” claimed dam reservoirs
contribute about 4 percent of the earth’s carbon dioxide emissions.
According to a June 12, 2002, story by Inter Press Service, IRN's
campaigns director Patrick McCully argued, “In tropical areas,
hydropower reservoirs may be much worse climate polluters than even
coal power plants.”
Now, environmental
groups rarely comment on hydropower as “renewable energy” and focus
mostly on wind or solar power. At the same time, they are working
actively to remove dams and, in the case of hydropower facilities,
the power they provide.
One such group,
American Rivers, says that it “is aware of over 460 dams that have
been removed over the past 40 years in this country.” The group’s
Web site says more are on the way – “and at least 100 more are
either committed for removal or under active consideration for
removal.”
American Rivers and
its many allies use everything in their arsenals to bring down the
dams, including lawsuits and sophisticated marketing efforts.
In January 2007,
Environmental Defense amped up its own public relations campaign and
unveiled a project with actor Harrison Ford narrating a “documentary
film on restoring this national treasure,” titled “Discover Hetch
Hetchy.”
Another group
opposing the dams is Earthjustice and its entire purpose is to sue
on behalf of the other groups. According to its own Web site,
“Earthjustice attorneys, representing citizen groups, scientists,
and others, go to court to see that the laws are obeyed and
enforced.”
The other groups –
Environmental Defense, the Sierra Club and more – all figure
prominently in the left’s global warming crusade, though that
directly conflicts with the removal of renewable energy from the
power grid.
Network Coverage
Totally Ignores Issue
If they weren’t
paying close attention, viewers could easily think dams were
important to network reporters. When storms over-filled dams in
Maryland or Maine, the stories received detailed attention. During
the 13 months of the study, 68 percent of the stories (45 out of 66)
mentioned threats to the dams such as storms, poor maintenance or
terrorism.
But none of the
stories even discussed the plan to tear down the Klamath dams or the
Supreme Court ruling that gave environmentalists more sway than
power companies.
The May 16 CBS
“Evening News” gave the network a chance to highlight multiple
dangers. Flooding in Massachusetts served as a perfect backdrop for
reporter Sharyn Alfonsi, who said the water was so bad “they’re
rescuing the rescuers.” The reason? The firefighter she interviewed
“lives down river from the Spigot Falls Dam,” which she warned could
collapse.
Alfonsi then
transitioned to more threats to America’s dams. She interviewed
engineer Scott Cahill, who “fixes dams for a living and he figures
to be busy for a long time.” According to the report, a study from
the American Society of Civil Engineers “found the nation’s dams are
in disrepair and dangerous.” The report didn’t mention anything
about dam removal.
At the same time,
other threats from terror or poor maintenance also gained network
notice. Reporters even acknowledged that America’s dams were major
achievements. The Hoover Dam was considered one of the possible
choices for the Seven Modern Wonders of the World on the Oct. 27,
2006, “Good Morning America.”
CBS reporter Bill
Geist highlighted the Hoover Dam during a story about a major
convention in nearby Las Vegas. His Aug. 13, 2006, “Sunday Morning”
story summed up the importance of the dam: “where would Las Vegas be
without Hoover Dam to provide water?” While he ignored the fact that
the dam also provides enough power for 1.3 million people in Nevada,
Arizona and California, that was as good as it got for dams on the
networks in 13 months.
Nearly all of the
stories made no connection between dams and power generation. The
few that did downplayed the significance. ABC’s “Nightline” analyzed
life in Aspen, Colo., and how the resort town was coping with the
possibility of global warming. The June 30, 2006, story mentioned
the various ways the residents were changing their habits, including
restarting the old hydroelectric plant “that was originally powering
the entire town,” according to one resident.
NBC ran two May 20,
2006, stories on China’s new Three Gorges Dam that included power
generation as a major feature of the facility. However, reporter
Charles Sabine was quick to downplay that on “Saturday Today.” “But
one of the biggest failings of the dam is, ironically, China's
phenomenal rate of growth, so fast that by 2020 the dam will supply
less than 2 percent of its energy needs.” Sabine treated 2 percent
of a large nation’s energy need as a minor thing.
Conclusion
The battle for
power isn’t limited to one or two countries. According to the August
6, 2006, New York Times, Chile faces similar needs for energy – and
similar environmentalist obstacles.
Although the Times
admitted Chile’s “weak spot is a lack of domestic energy sources,”
environmental groups oppose new dams. “There are so few places on
earth with the qualities of the Patagonia region of Chile that it’s
really criminal to try to foist this kind of project on the Chilean
people in the name of avoiding impending blackouts and that sort of
thing,” said Glenn Swikes, Latin American coordinator for the
International Rivers Network. Swikes vowed a protracted fight. “This
is going to be a long battle, in the trenches, using every legal and
political tactic possible.”
New dams in the
United States face a similar fate. In separate reports a year apart,
the Los Angeles Times described new dams being fought consistently.
In the Feb. 5, 2006, story, the “conservation group American Rivers”
was battling a new dam on the Columbia River despite widespread
problems of drought. On Feb. 1, 2007, it was the Sierra Club and the
Center for Biological Diversity opposing a “reservoir, dam and
hydroelectric facility in the Santa Ana Mountains to provide power
during periods of peak energy use.”
Even left-wing
politicians oppose dam removal in the Hetch Hetchy Valley of
California's Yosemite National Park with an enormous price tag of up
to $10 billion, but the battle continues. And the media aren’t
exactly on the sidelines. The Sacramento Bee's Tom Philps won a
Pulitzer Prize for a series of editorials advocating the dam's
removal.
But billions of
dollars don’t matter to eco-extremists. According to the March 31,
2006, USA Today, the Bonneville Power Administration spent $8
billion in failed attempts to help salmon travel in the Snake and
Columbia rivers. That’s just the beginning.
All of this
information is available – but only in print. While America’s
politicians discuss “energy independence,” so-called
environmentalists are actively trying to undermine the power grid –
all in the name of salmon.
This battle has all
the elements of a newsworthy story – it’s controversial; it affects
tens of thousands of people. Yet the big three broadcast networks
continue to ignore the problem.
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