Record number of RIVER BARRIERS REMOVED across Europe in 2023 🌊
Removal of nearly 500 barriers last year will help restore disturbed #waterways to their natural state, says #DamRemovalEurope
Ajit Niranjan
Mon 15 Apr 2024
#Europe removed a record number of #dams and other barriers from its #rivers in 2023, a report has found, helping to restore its disturbed waterways to their natural states.
"The fragility of aging #WaterInfrastructure is evident in many communities. The American Society of Civil Engineers' U.S. Infrastructure Report Card in 2021 gave U.S. municipal #water systems overall a grade of C-minus.
Flood protection infrastructure earned even lower grades: U.S. #levees and #dams both received D grades.
The challenges:
1: Many stakeholders; who decides?
2: Past decisions affect future choices
3: Who pays?"
Memories of a wild time. This cartoon on the front of an old issue of #vejret ("weather" magazine of the Danish meteorological society) brought it flooding back. I remember the great storm of 1987 which the UK Met Office famously failed to forecast (but #meteoFrance did!)
A meteorologist is being rushed into Paddington Green ( where terrorists are usually held) police station for an interview
The Iowa River Power Dam on the Iowa River (Coralville, IA) has a curved spillway as do a lot of the dams in the area. There are a great many trees lining the river & a great number fall in & get hung up on the top of the dam. In winter, interesting ice formations often appear on these ephemeral structures. This kind of makes me think of the needle & cylinder of the old-timey cylinder phonographs.
(01/02/24)
Recent heavy downpours in the Lower Volta area of Ghana led to the worst flooding in the region’s history. The flooding was caused by a spillage (a deliberate release of water) from the Akosombo Dam, the country’s biggest hydroelectric dam. Over 26,000 people were displaced. No deaths have been officially announced. The last recorded spillage was in 2010.
This Billion-Dollar Plan to Save #Salmon Depends on a Giant Fish Vacuum
Many endorse opening dams and letting #fish coast the natural current as the best way to avoid extinction. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has other ideas.
India-Funded Hydro Projects in Bhutan Under Scanner After Sikkim Teesta Disaster: Report
Environmental activist and water and dam safety expert Himanshu Thakkar told The Hindu that the likely change in design is an “admission of a major failure by these agencies”.
“#NorthAfrica is not immune to #ClimateChange, but this is also about #corruption and incompetence. In #Morocco perhaps you had seconds or minutes when the tectonic plates moved, but here in #Libya there was plenty of warning about this hurricane … yet there was no evacuation of #Derna. "
#Libya’s general prosecutor, Al-Sediq al-Sour, said prosecutors would investigate the collapse of the #dams, which were built in the 1970s, as well as the allocation of maintenance funds. He said prosecutors would investigate local authorities in the city, as well as previous governments. #LibyaFloods#Floods
This rainfall was massively bigger than it could have been because of #climatechange. The dams might have broken in a smaller #storm, but there are #dams like them all over the world and storms are getting stronger.
We need to prepare globally and we are still arguing about other things.
The article at the link has some very disturbing descriptions of death and bodies—you should know that before you click.
Climate change is an immediate threat to the majority of the world's population.
We need a local, regional, state, national, and international "moon shot" type of concentration of effort using available resources while developing and advancing new science and technologies to counteract the damage humans have caused.
Without this type of all-out, universal cooperation, human civilization, and perhaps humanity itself, are in imminent danger of extinction.
Restoring #ecosystems is an Everything, Everywhere, All at Once #ClimateChange mitigation strategy that works.
Removing #dams and allowing #waterways to resume their normal flows increases the numbers of native species and overall health of the #environment.
Replacing #hydroelectric power with far less intrusive and destructive sources, like smartly deployed #solar, can result in a net gain of environmental health and #climate change reduction.
A survey released by the Amazon Environmental Research Institute (IPAM) showed that #cattle pastures occupied 75% of the deforested area on public lands in the Amazon. Other causes of deforestation include the construction of new highways, #logging roads, #dams, and #mines.