Jack Sanchez: We don't need any more dams - The Union of Grass Valley
Marc Reisner’s Cadillac Desert (1986) chronicles the stupidity of building dams on almost every river in the U. S. , killing or severely impeding anadromous fish runs everywhere. California is in the grips of a severe drought as we all know in spite of having almost all of its rivers dammed, none of which have helped to avert this drought nor create more water. The San Joaquin, one of California’s two great rivers, was killed by dams with all its fish in it. Now efforts are underway to attempt a restoration, so far not very successful efforts. We have two needless dams locally, the North Fork Dam on the American River and the Englebright Dam on the South Yuba River. Whatever the arguments, a dam is a dam, an artificial construct that hurts aquatic life. Dam were sold to the public by promising fish hatcheries which are currently found to hurt fish and maybe ultimately kill them by weakening the species by nonselective bucket breeding of eggs and milt. But beavers were vilified to build pointless dams, which have been built by the hundreds nationwide. Today, however, we have a most pressing dam issue that all Californians should focus on. Nevada Irrigation District (NID) is trying to build the Parker Reservoir (they don’t dare call it a dam because the public wants no more dams) on the Bear... Source: www.theunion.com
