Submitted by InterestedReader on July 29, 2007 - 2:13pm.
Phi Tran has the right idea but it will take decades to implement it. Tyson turbines have been tested in Australia and Neo-Aerodynamic type turbines should also prove very effective in extracting power from free flow hydro. These types of devices should be prevalent and come to replace thousnds of dams in the next century or two as we meet nature half way.
Pope Benedict XVI recently said we have to "listen to the earth" and that that is precisely the direction free hydro will permit. Dams hold back the movement of fish. For the first time in decades, Oregon is going to give back the rivers to salmon and other species that need them for their life cycles by removing one or more of its dams.
We really have been in ignorance for many years as to the harm dams cause not just to fish but to farmers who rely on soil brought down rivers and to people who must live in the area of reservoirs created by dams that produce stagnant water and the spread of diseases.
It is shameful that the government of Brazil, for example, plans to ram rod through dams in part of the Amazon that will result in much harm to the native tribes there when they could produce needed electricity by free flow hydro without the harmful side effects of forced population relocaton or the spread of dengue and malaria. It seems that the people who can least speak out, the uneducated ones, have no defense against such governments.
China is similar. They want to produce non-polluting energy yet arrest protestors who complain and demonstrate. Relocation because of dam construction is not a choice of the citizen. The value of the dollar and economic expansion in China serves as a barrier to good clean energy development because it is the easy, though not necessarily the best path to take. Thousands upon thousands of new dams are being planned there without recourse to consider the long term impacts. The Chinese government has not once mentioned free hydro in any of their publications and it is doubtful if they have even heard of it or considered its benefits.
Our own USA is another example of movement in molasses. One branch of the government has tested free hydro and found it to be more efficient in converting river energy into electricity than water from dams, and why not? When we stop water in a dam, we literally throw away the energy of the moving water that was used to produce the resevoir in back of the dam. Yet, our government is unwieldy to the extent that knowldge gained in one branch seems not able to be applied in another.
We have dozens of dams in the US that are reaching the ends of their life cycles or not being used at all and should be removed.
India is another case. People there have opposed the building of dams because it takes away prime agricultural land or deprives wild animals of natural habitat. How humans they survive without food if the hydro is being used to benefit the industrial sector at the expense of their way of life. Humans deserve natural habitat for survival just as do animals. Reservoirs of hundres of square kilometers are nothing to joke about in considering that they take away land from the farmer. Good land is habitat for people dependent upon the growth of crops for their way of life.
Yes, free hydro for rivers is definitely the path to be taken if we expect our fish, our wildlife and our famers to thrive but it will most likely take the passing of generations before anyone hears their silent cry.
To reply to your comments,which are very reasonable... we ...
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The silent cry for free current hydro.
Phi Tran has the right idea but it will take decades to implement it. Tyson turbines have been tested in Australia and Neo-Aerodynamic type turbines should also prove very effective in extracting power from free flow hydro. These types of devices should be prevalent and come to replace thousnds of dams in the next century or two as we meet nature half way.
Pope Benedict XVI recently said we have to "listen to the earth" and that that is precisely the direction free hydro will permit. Dams hold back the movement of fish. For the first time in decades, Oregon is going to give back the rivers to salmon and other species that need them for their life cycles by removing one or more of its dams.
We really have been in ignorance for many years as to the harm dams cause not just to fish but to farmers who rely on soil brought down rivers and to people who must live in the area of reservoirs created by dams that produce stagnant water and the spread of diseases.
It is shameful that the government of Brazil, for example, plans to ram rod through dams in part of the Amazon that will result in much harm to the native tribes there when they could produce needed electricity by free flow hydro without the harmful side effects of forced population relocaton or the spread of dengue and malaria. It seems that the people who can least speak out, the uneducated ones, have no defense against such governments.
China is similar. They want to produce non-polluting energy yet arrest protestors who complain and demonstrate. Relocation because of dam construction is not a choice of the citizen. The value of the dollar and economic expansion in China serves as a barrier to good clean energy development because it is the easy, though not necessarily the best path to take. Thousands upon thousands of new dams are being planned there without recourse to consider the long term impacts. The Chinese government has not once mentioned free hydro in any of their publications and it is doubtful if they have even heard of it or considered its benefits.
Our own USA is another example of movement in molasses. One branch of the government has tested free hydro and found it to be more efficient in converting river energy into electricity than water from dams, and why not? When we stop water in a dam, we literally throw away the energy of the moving water that was used to produce the resevoir in back of the dam. Yet, our government is unwieldy to the extent that knowldge gained in one branch seems not able to be applied in another.
We have dozens of dams in the US that are reaching the ends of their life cycles or not being used at all and should be removed.
India is another case. People there have opposed the building of dams because it takes away prime agricultural land or deprives wild animals of natural habitat. How humans they survive without food if the hydro is being used to benefit the industrial sector at the expense of their way of life. Humans deserve natural habitat for survival just as do animals. Reservoirs of hundres of square kilometers are nothing to joke about in considering that they take away land from the farmer. Good land is habitat for people dependent upon the growth of crops for their way of life.
Yes, free hydro for rivers is definitely the path to be taken if we expect our fish, our wildlife and our famers to thrive but it will most likely take the passing of generations before anyone hears their silent cry.
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