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..., Lake Chatuge is more than a scenic retreat. It serves as a crucial source of flood control, hydroelectric power, drinking water for Hiawassee — and, just as importantly, it fuels the local economy. Towns County in Georgia has a population of roughly 12,000, a number that swells each summer as tourists flock to the lake and mountain trails. Since 2021, visitors have spent between $90 million and $100 million annually in the area, generating about $6 million each year in state and local taxes, according to the Georgia Department of Economic Development. “That helps keep our property taxes lower,”...

...“It’s such a victory for the river,” said Elaine Marsh, a watershed resource specialist with Summit Metro Parks. Marsh is one of the founding members of Friends of the Crooked River, a nonprofit organization focused on giving a voice to the Cuyahoga River....

No new water storage infrastructure has been built in California, more than a decade after voters approved a $7.5 billion water bond in Proposition 1 of 2014. The San Jose Mercury-News reported Wednesday that officials are deciding what to do with nearly half a billion dollars of available cash after the “collapse” of a project to expand the Los Vaqueros Reservoir, which is east of San Francisco. Other projects have received funding for planning and permitting, but nothing has been built. The newspaper noted: A majority of the seven board members of the California Water Commission, a state agency that...

Beavers have saved the Czech government and its citizens $1.2 million by flooding what used to be an army training site, where a dam was planned, by building one of their own. Local officials had intended to build a dam to protect the Klabava River and its ecosystem, which includes the endangered crayfish, from acid water spilling over from surrounding ponds. This proposed project would also turn the protected area south of Prague into a wetland. It was first proposed in 2018 but the build permit was delayed due to negotiations over the land with the military, which used the...

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has dramatically increased the amount of water flowing from two dams in Tulare County, sending massive flows down river channels toward farmlands in the San Joaquin Valley. Federal records show that water releases from Terminus Dam at Lake Kaweah and Schafer Dam at Lake Success jumped early Friday morning. The sudden increase occurred four days after President Trump said on social media that the U.S. military had “entered” California and “TURNED ON THE WATER.” Trump also vowed during a visit to Los Angeles last week to “open up the valves and pumps” in California...

... From October 17 through October 29, 2024, during the fall-run Chinook salmon migration, the data suggest that more than six thousand fish have passed the former Iron Gate Dam site and migrating into the newly re-opened habitats. These fish were captured by our team’s SONAR camera which is installed at the former dam site. How does SONAR work? The camera uses sound waves to generate movie-like imagery of passing fish on a continuous basis. Our team of scientists analyzes the camera’s recordings considering several factors including fish size and time of movement to discern that most of these are...

the lesson from Helene is the opposite from that being promoted. In 1933, the Tennessee Valley Authority was given the mandate for flood control in the valley of the Tennessee River and its tributaries. Over the next 40 years, they built 49 dams, which, for the most part, accomplished their goal. Whereas floods in the Tennessee were once catastrophic, younger people are mostly unaware of them. The French Broad River (Asheville) is an upstream tributary where flood control dams weren't constructed due to local opposition. Rather than the devastation of Hurricane Helene on Asheville illustrating the effect of climate change,...

t’s been 8+ months of polluted clay sediment flowing down the Klamath River. And according to the profiteers at the Klamath River Renewal Corporation (‘KRRC’), ‘all is going as planned‘. But is it really? If ‘going as planned’ means profitability is on track and ending rural life and livelihoods is underway, then maybe it is ‘going as planned’?

The decades-long push led by tribal communities to remove four dams along the Klamath River reached another victory this week as crews began the project’s final stages, restoring historic water flows to the river for the first time in over a century. The fight to remove dams along the Klamath began over two decades ago, when poor water quality and river flows caused tens of thousands of the river’s fish, mostly Chinook salmon, to die in a massive fish kill in 2002. For thousands of years, Chinook salmon have been a fundamental source of physical, spiritual and economic sustenance to...

The Shasta Indian Nation will be returned 2,820 acres of ancestral land in northwestern California, Gov. Gavin Newsom announced Tuesday. The land return is the largest in California history and comes as a reconciliation effort to apologize to Native communities for historical injustices, the release said. Newsom's office said he discussed the land return with the Shasta Indian Nation earlier this month after visiting the Klamath River dam removal project, which is on ancestral lands near the California-Oregon border. The project is the largest dam removal and river restoration in the country intended to restore land and more than 300...

The U.S. government on Tuesday acknowledged, for the first time, the harmful role it has played over the past century in building and operating dams in the Pacific Northwest — dams that devastated Native American tribes by inundating their villages and decimating salmon runs while bringing electricity, irrigation and jobs to nearby communities.

~This month marks The Mark Steyn Club's seventh birthday, and I thank profoundly all those First Fortnight Founding Members who've opted to sign on for an eighth year. We hope, as the days proceed, that our First Month Founding Members will want to do the same. ~I don't have anything to say about the death of the President of Iran, except that I was struck by the curious detail that he and his Azerbaijani counterpart had been opening two new dams. American presidents don't do that: Instead, the US demolishes dams at the rate of over fifty a year. If...

What are the ramifications and true reality of breaching the dams of the pacific northwest (PNW)? Please begin with our previous articles on this topic, found here, here, and here. In this installment we bring you information on the debate regarding the salmon and steelhead populations. The paper seen below was written by retired Idaho Department of Fish and Game Fish Culturist, Fish Hatchery Superintendent, Fish Hatchery Manager, and Fish Hatchery Complex Supervisor Jerry McGehee on January 2, 2024. It is entitled More Pieces of the Puzzle to the Life Cycle of Idaho Salmon and Steelhead. McGehee’s ten-page paper explains...

The California Department of Water Resources (DWR) last week released its next five-year plan for the State Water Project—Update 2023. After years of meetings, California’s premier water agency has decided to focus on “three intersecting themes: addressing climate urgency, strengthening watershed resilience, and achieving equity in water management.”Lake Shasta Dam in Shasta Lake, Calif., on Feb. 14, 2023. (Allan Stein/The Epoch Times)Water supplies for California’s 40 million people and the planet’s most productive agriculture have third- to fifth-level priority.There is nothing new here, except to publicly admit to betraying the public trust. Really?Over several decades, the public has been deceived...

What are the ramifications and true reality of breaching the dams of the pacific northwest (PNW)? Please begin with our first article. Here in Part 2, we bring you additional information on the potential effects of dam breaching on the movement of wheat and other grains from Idaho, Oregon, and Washington farms to the Portland harbor for distribution worldwide. According to the Port of Portland, “The Portland harbor exports the largest volume of wheat in the United States” and “The Columbia River is the third largest grain exporting center in the world.” In particular, this installment addresses omissions from the...

What are the ramifications and true reality of breaching the dams in the pacific northwest (PNW)? Idaho Dispatch brought you this article last December when the Biden Administration reached an agreement with Oregon, Washington, and four Pacific Northwest Native American Tribes. Now we will look back at the history and examine the myriad aspects of this topic which must be discussed and analyzed thoroughly. A short list to begin includes: the population and health of salmon, the irrigation/farming/water rights which will be affected, the financial impacts, the shipping and barging system, and hydroelectric power. We start with history, legal aspects,...

Arizona Independent Sen. Kyrsten Sinema and Nevada Rep. Susie Lee introduced legislation this week aimed at enabling $45 million in Bureau of Reclamation funds to be used for helping the Hoover Dam. Proponents of the "Help Hoover Dam Act" say it would cut regulations and allow the bureau to tap into the Colorado River Dam Fund to support efforts related to the dam's upkeep. Ed Gerak, Executive Director of Irrigation and Electrical Districts of Arizona, said in a statement that the funding could help mitigate possible price increases for electricity. This bill will allow the Bureau of Reclamation to use...

California Gov. Gavin Newsom backed the controversial proposal to remove four Klamath River hydroelectric dams along the California-Oregon border. Now, the same fish he swore to protect could be killed in the process. The dams had been breached on claims that it would help salmon migrate, but the Klamath River is now full of destroyed spawning salmon beds and pollution including decomposed algae, organic deposition, chemicals, and fine silt which is killing its ecosystem, according to a report from the California Globe. Additionally, dead endangered steelhead trout and other species have been rising to the surface of the Klamath River,...

Let’s face facts; some people are getting richer off the removal of the Klamath River dams. Glen Spain member [formerly] of Klamath River Renewal Corp. ‘KRRC’ board and fisherman’s advocate said “Economics Not Salmon Is the Reason PacifiCorp is Removing the Dams” It is now estimated by some experts that the total direct cost for the Klamath River dam removal project, will reach $800-million dollars, not the $450-million cost estimate projected over tens years ago. And then we have the costs related to the liabilities that are already arising from what is seen by many as an ill-fated project. According...

Before the 1950s, an estimated 5.5 million coho salmon, Chinook salmon and steelhead returned to California rivers as part of their natural life cycle. In 2022, only 93,000 of the iconic fish spawned in the state’s rivers, a number so low it prompted closure of the commercial fishing season. A report released by CalTrout in 2017 in partnership with the UC Davis Center for Watershed Sciences found that 74% of California’s native salmon, steelhead, and trout species are likely to be extinct within a century or less if present trends continue