This entry is part of my journal from Semester in the West. For all SITW journal entries, click here. For all SITW posts, including blog posts I wrote while on the program, click here. To learn more about the program, click here.
camp: Along the Green River, Dinosaur National Monument, Colorado/Utah
Did Floyd Dominy* never go rafting as a child? Well anyway, that’s a stupid reason not to build a dam. Habitat seems more important, and the species loss downriver of Flaming Gorge is apparently about 50% on the Green River and 80% after it seems the Yampa (80% are still around, that is). Maybe engineers should be requires to take a river ecology course. Or a microeconomics course focused on appropriate cost-benefit accounting. I wonder if anyone involved in Flaming Gorge or Glen Canyon saw what they were doing and thought the river would be better left alone but went along with it because their salary depended on it. Maybe they went along because they knew they were powerless to stop the machine that was Dominy, the Bureau and Congress. The holy trifecta of dams. I wonder if they’ll ever start taking them out?
*Dominy was the commissioner of the Bureau of Reclamation during the era when they went on a crazy dam-building spree.
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